What Is an ATS, and How Do You Pass It?
Before a human reads your CV, software tries to. Here is what that software actually does, what breaks it, and how to write for both readers at once.
Includes a built-in ATS check and a plain-text export.An ATS — applicant tracking system — is the database an employer uses to collect and sort applications. Workday, Taleo, Greenhouse, SuccessFactors, Bullhorn and Lever are the common ones. When you upload a CV, the ATS runs it through a parser that tries to turn your document back into structured fields: name, email, phone, employer, job title, start date, end date, skills.
The myth worth clearing up first
You will read that "75% of CVs are rejected by robots before a human sees them". That figure has no credible source and it misdescribes how these systems work. An ATS is a filing cabinet with a search box. It does not usually auto-reject anyone. What actually happens is worse in a subtler way: a recruiter searches the pile for "SAP" AND "Dubai", and you simply do not appear in the results, because the parser filed your skills section as part of your address.
So the goal is not to trick a machine. The goal is to be findable — to make sure that when someone searches for what you actually do, your record comes back with the right fields filled in.
What actually breaks parsing
Every failure below is a formatting choice, not a content one:
- Text inside images. A CV exported as a picture of a page contains no text at all. This is the single most common total failure, and it is invisible to you because it looks perfect.
- Headers and footers. Many parsers ignore the header/footer region of a Word or PDF file entirely. Your phone number and email must be in the body of page one.
- Multi-column layouts. A two-column CV can be read in the wrong order — the parser runs across both columns line by line, interleaving your skills list into your job history.
- Tables and text boxes. Often read cell-by-cell in an unpredictable order, or skipped. Use them for layout at your own risk.
- Invented section headings. "My Journey" and "Where I've Made an Impact" are not recognised. Use the boring ones the parser is looking for: Work Experience, Education, Skills, Certifications.
- Dates in odd formats. Write
Jan 2022 – Mar 2025. Not "2022–25", not "Winter '22", and use a real en dash or hyphen, not a graphic separator. - Icons instead of labels. A telephone glyph next to your number often parses as a random character or nothing. Some parsers then discard the whole line.
- Non-standard fonts. A decorative font can encode text so that copy-paste produces gibberish. Test it: open your PDF, select all, paste into a plain text editor. What you see is roughly what the parser sees.
The two-minute test
Open your finished PDF. Press Ctrl+A, then Ctrl+C. Paste into Notepad. If your name, phone, email, job titles and dates all appear, in a sensible order and in that sequence, your CV parses. If the paste is empty, jumbled or missing your contact details, fix that before you send it anywhere.
Keywords: match the advert, do not stuff it
Recruiters search using the language of the job advert, so your CV should contain that language — where it is true. If the advert says "accounts payable" and your CV says "supplier invoices", add the advert's phrase to a bullet that describes real work you did.
"Skills: accounts payable, accounts receivable, reconciliation, VAT, Tally, QuickBooks, SAP, Excel, audit, payroll, budgeting, forecasting, taxation, IFRS, GAAP…"
A recruiter reads this as a list of words, not evidence. It also matches you to roles you cannot do, which wastes an interview slot.
"Ran accounts payable for 140 suppliers in Tally ERP 9; cut invoice-to-payment time from 21 days to 9 by moving approvals onto a weekly batch."
Same keyword, now attached to a number and a mechanism. It matches the search and survives the human read that follows it.
Include the abbreviation and the full term at least once between them — "Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA)", "Applicant Tracking System (ATS)" — because recruiters search for either one.
A layout that parses cleanly
- Name, job title, phone, email, city — as plain text lines at the top of page one.
- A three-line professional summary containing your job title in the words the advert uses.
- Work Experience, newest first. One line per role:
Job Title — Employer, City | Mar 2021 – Present, then 3–5 bullets starting with a verb. - Education, then Skills, then Certifications and Languages.
- Single column throughout. One standard font. Bullets as real list items, not drawn characters.
None of that stops the CV looking good. A single-column layout with generous spacing, a clear type hierarchy and one accent colour reads better to humans than a cramped two-column grid — and it is the one a parser can follow.
When the portal asks for Word or plain text
Some Gulf and government portals still reject PDF uploads, and a few older parsers handle .doc better.
Keep a plain-text version: no bullets beyond a hyphen, no tabs, no indentation, one item per line.
Resume Orbit exports .txt and .doc alongside the PDF for exactly this, and its ATS
check flags the specific things above — photo, columns, missing contact details, unparseable dates —
before you send anything.
Check my CV against ATS rules — free →
Read next
UAE CV format →
Visa status, nationality and photo norms for Dubai and the wider Gulf.
CV examples →
Worked samples for driver, accountant, sales, engineer and teacher roles.
Cover letter guide →
A four-paragraph structure that works, with a full worked example.
سی وی کیسے بنائیں →
The same guidance in Urdu, written for Pakistani and Gulf applicants.