You send a polished resume to dozens of jobs and hear nothing. Before blaming yourself, consider who (or what) reads it first. Most mid-sized and large employers use an applicant tracking system (ATS) to collect and organise applications. Recruiters then search and filter inside it.
The good news: writing for ATS also makes your resume clearer for humans. Here is how to do both. A note on myths: you will often hear that 75 percent of resumes are "rejected by robots". Such statistics typically trace back to vendor marketing, not independent research. What is certain is that parsing errors and missing keywords can make you harder to find.
Key takeaways
- Use a clean, single-column layout with standard headings.
- Mirror relevant keywords from each job description, honestly.
- Show quantified achievements, not just duties.
- Tailor your resume for each application and keep text selectable.
How an ATS reads your resume
- It converts your file to text and extracts fields: name, contact details, job titles, employers, dates, education, skills.
- It stores the data in a searchable profile.
- Recruiters search by keywords, titles, locations and filters, or the system ranks candidates by match to the job.
Fancy layouts (columns, text boxes, icons, tables, graphics, headers and footers) can confuse parsing, scrambling the order or hiding information.
Formatting rules
- Single column, top-to-bottom layout.
- Standard fonts such as Arial, Calibri, Helvetica or Times New Roman, size 10 to 12 pt.
- Standard section headings: Summary, Work Experience, Education, Skills, Certifications, Projects.
- Simple bullet points (solid circles) rather than decorative symbols.
- Avoid tables, text boxes, images, charts and skill-rating bars for core content.
- Put contact details in the body, not in the header or footer, where some parsers skip them.
- Use consistent date formats (for example "Jan 2023 - Present").
- File type: follow the employer's instructions; otherwise a text-based PDF or .docx. Never an image or scanned PDF.
- Descriptive file name: Firstname-Lastname-Resume.pdf.
What to include
Header
Full name, city and country, phone, professional email, LinkedIn URL and portfolio or GitHub for technical roles. Skip photos and personal data not relevant to the job (age, marital status) unless local norms require them.
Professional summary (2 to 3 lines)
State who you are, your top strengths and the value you bring, using key terms from the target role.
Example: "Full-stack web developer with 3 years' experience building React and Node.js applications for e-commerce clients. Reduced page load time by 40 percent and shipped a booking platform used by 2,000 customers."
Work experience
List in reverse chronological order: job title, company, location, dates. Under each role, use 3 to 6 bullets that start with action verbs and show outcomes.
Skills
Group hard skills (languages, tools, software, certifications) and relevant soft skills. Spell out terms and include common abbreviations: "Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)", "JavaScript (JS)".
Education and certifications
Degree, institution, year; add relevant certifications with issuers and dates.
Projects (especially for juniors and career changers)
Brief description, technologies used, results and a link.
Write bullets that prove impact
Use the pattern: Action verb + what you did + how/with what + measurable result.
| Weak | Strong |
|---|---|
| Responsible for managing social media | Grew Instagram following from 2,000 to 11,000 in 8 months by launching a weekly video series, increasing website referrals by 35% |
| Worked on website improvements | Optimised images and caching, cutting page load time from 5.2 s to 2.1 s and lifting mobile conversions by 18% |
| Helped customers with issues | Resolved 40+ support tickets per week with a 96% satisfaction score, and wrote 15 help-centre articles that reduced repeat tickets |
Use only real numbers. If you do not have exact figures, use honest approximations or describe scale (team size, budget, users). Never fabricate; employers verify.
Strong action verbs
Built, launched, designed, automated, reduced, increased, negotiated, led, analysed, migrated, optimised, trained, delivered, streamlined.
Keywords: how to match the job description
- Copy the job description into a document.
- Highlight required skills, tools, qualifications and recurring phrases.
- Compare with your resume. Add honest matches in your summary, skills and bullets.
- Use the employer's wording (for example "project management" vs "project coordination") where it accurately describes your experience.
- Include both full terms and acronyms once.
Do not hide white-text keywords or list skills you cannot demonstrate; modern systems and recruiters both spot this, and interviews will expose it. An AI assistant can help you compare a job post with your resume; see how to prompt AI tools well, and always edit the output into your own voice.
Tailoring without starting from scratch
- Keep a master resume with every achievement.
- For each application, copy it and keep the 10 to 15 most relevant bullets.
- Rewrite the summary and reorder skills to match the role.
- Adjust the headline job title to match the role when truthful.
Common mistakes that hurt your chances
- Graphics-heavy templates from design tools that parse badly.
- Creative headings like "My Journey" instead of "Work Experience".
- Typos and inconsistent formatting.
- Listing duties instead of achievements.
- Vague skills with no context.
- Gaps unexplained. A short, honest line is fine ("Career break for caregiving", "Full-time study").
- Outdated or unprofessional email addresses.
- Too long: three pages of text for a junior role.
Test your resume
- Copy the text from your PDF and paste it into a plain-text editor. If the order is jumbled or content is missing, parsers will struggle.
- Upload it to a free resume checker and compare how fields are parsed, but treat any "ATS score" as a rough guide, not truth.
- Ask a friend to read it for 20 seconds and tell you what you do.
- Check links work and the file opens on phone and desktop.
- Use our free word counter to keep your summary concise and bullet points tight.
Pre-submit checklist
- Single column, standard headings, standard fonts.
- Contact details in the body; LinkedIn and portfolio linked.
- Summary tailored to the job.
- Keywords from the posting included honestly.
- 3 to 6 quantified bullets per recent role.
- No tables, images or text boxes for core content.
- Spell-checked and consistent dates.
- Saved as a text-based PDF or .docx with a clean file name.
Beyond the resume
A resume gets you noticed; a portfolio and network get you hired. For developers, our web developer roadmap shows how to build a portfolio, and our guide to freelancing in Bangladesh covers finding clients directly. Hiring developers yourself? Talk to Node-devs about building your team or project.
