ATS-friendly resumes
An ATS-friendly resume, without having to think about it
Applicant tracking systems read your resume before a person does. Most rejections for “formatting” come from a handful of layout choices. AceJobs generates every resume in the format those systems parse most reliably, so you can spend your time on what it says.
What you’d ask Ace
“Make my resume ATS-friendly for this posting.”
How it works
- 1
Start from your resume
Upload it as a PDF, or import your LinkedIn data export. Ace reads the content into a structured profile and leaves the old layout behind.
- 2
Tailor for the posting
Ace leads with the experience the role asks for, using the posting’s own terms where they are true of you.
- 3
Export a parser-safe PDF
Single column, real selectable text, standard section headings. Any template you choose keeps that structure.
What an ATS actually struggles with
An applicant tracking system extracts the text from your resume and sorts it into fields — name, roles, dates, skills — before anyone reads it. Layouts built for the eye often break that extraction.
- Multiple columns, which can be read across instead of down
- Tables and text boxes, whose contents are often skipped
- Text inside images or icons, which is not text at all
- Creative section names that do not map to the usual fields
Format is half of it; language is the other
Once your resume is parsed, it is usually ranked or filtered on how well it matches the posting. A resume that describes the right work in different words can score below one that uses the posting’s terms.
That is why AceJobs tailors per posting rather than producing one “optimised” resume: the language that matters changes with every job description.
Common questions
What is an ATS-friendly resume?
A resume an applicant tracking system can parse accurately: a single-column layout, real selectable text, standard section headings, and no tables, text boxes or text in images — ideally using the job posting’s own terms.
Are AceJobs resumes ATS-friendly?
Yes. Every resume is exported as a clean single-column PDF generated from structured data, and every template keeps that structure.
Is a PDF or a Word file better for an ATS?
Modern applicant tracking systems read text-based PDFs well. What matters more is that the PDF contains real text in a simple layout, which is how AceJobs generates it.