You found a posting that fits, spent an evening on your resume, clicked submit and heard nothing. Sometimes the problem is not your experience but the file: the portal could not tell your job title from your employer, or a recruiter searched for a skill you wrote under another name. An ATS resume fixes that with plain headings, text the software can read and the posting's own terms.
How to Write an ATS Resume - Key Takeaways
- List jobs newest first, in reverse-chronological order, under standard headings such as Work Experience, Education and Skills, so the parser files each line in the right field.
- Copy the posting's exact terms for skills, tools and credentials, and write each acronym out in full once.
- Keep your name and contact details in the body of the page, never in a header, footer or text box.
- Send a text-based PDF unless the portal asks for Word; a scanned page or an image gives the parser no text to read.
- Stay on 1 page early in your career and 2 at most later; Title 5 federal postings accept 2 pages and no more.
- Test the file with an ATS resume checker before you apply, then read it once as the recruiter will.
What an ATS does with your resume, and what recruiters search for
Applicant tracking software, usually called an ATS, sits behind most online job applications. When you upload a resume, it parses the text into fields such as name, job titles, employers, dates, skills and education, and stores you as a candidate record. Recruiters then search and filter those records by job title, skill or credential.
A recruiter finds you only if the parser reads your file correctly and your wording matches what the recruiter types into the search. Build the resume from these sections, each under its usual heading:
- Your name, a headline that repeats the posting's job title, and your phone, email and city
- A 2 to 3 line summary at the top, which needs no heading of its own
- Work Experience, starting with your current or latest job
- Skills, with software named exactly as the posting names it
- Education
- Certificates, if the posting requires a license or certification
- Languages, Volunteer Experience or Key Achievements, only when they help with this posting
Best format for an ATS resume
Use the reverse-chronological resume format. Each job sits on its own lines with the title, the employer, its city and the dates in MM/YYYY form, newest first, which keeps every job's fields in a predictable order for the parser and the recruiter. A functional or skills-based resume, which puts a skills block ahead of a short job list, can suit a long gap or a career change, but keep the title, employer and dates on every job so the parser still has a timeline to file.
- Best for most job seekersReverse-chronologicalYour jobs, newest first, with your results under each one.Best for: A steady work history in your field
- FunctionalSkills grouped up top, with a short work history below.Best for: Gaps or very little experience
- CombinationA skills section first, then your full work history.Best for: A career change with strong skills
Length is a reading question more than a parsing one. Keep to 1 page if you have under 10 years of relevant work, and go to 2 pages only when the extra page holds jobs the posting cares about. Federal applications have a hard cap of 2 pages, covered at the end of this guide.
| Setting | What to use |
|---|---|
| Length | 1 page under 10 years of experience; 2 pages at most, including federal jobs |
| Layout | 1 column is safest for an unknown portal; a 2-column design only with real text, no text boxes |
| Headings | Standard words: Work Experience, Education, Skills, Certificates |
| Dates | MM/YYYY on every job, with Present for the current one |
| Text | A common sans serif, body text no smaller than 10 pt, no letter-spaced headings |
| Photo | Usually left off in the US and Canada; Greenhouse lists photos as a parse risk |
| Personal data | Name, phone, email and city only; skip your age, family status and SSN |
| File | A text-based PDF under 2.5MB, or Word when the posting requests it |
Most US and Canadian resumes carry no photo, and an ATS resume is no exception. Greenhouse's own help center lists graphics, photos and word art among the things that make a resume fail to parse, so icons, logos, skill bars and charts are better left out too.
ATS-friendly resume section headings and layout
A parser decides where a section starts by its heading, so name every section with the word a recruiter would use. Greenhouse names "resumes without clear sections" and resumes with tables, headers and footers among the causes of a failed parse. Keep the resume sections to the standard set and give each one a plain label.
| Use this heading | Instead of | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Work Experience | Where I've Worked, My Story | Experience is the word a parser and a recruiter both scan for |
| Education | Learning, Schooling | Degree and school fields fill from this section |
| Skills | Toolbox, What I Bring | Skill searches run against this list |
| Certificates or Certifications | Badges, Credentials Earned | Licenses and certifications are often a search filter |
| Volunteer Experience | Giving Back | Keeps unpaid work apart from your job history |
One column or two for an ATS?
Greenhouse lists "a columned layout" among the formats it may fail to parse, and it flags resumes that put the name and contact details in a header, footer or text box. A single column is the safest choice when you do not know which system an employer runs. If you prefer a two-column design, make sure every word is real text you can highlight, keep your contact details in the main body, and test the file before you send it. The ATS formatting mistakes that cost the most are usually small: letters spaced out in a heading, a table holding your job history, or dates placed in a margin.
ATS resume summary vs. objective
The test is simple: if you have held the job you are applying for, or one close to it, write a resume summary; if you have not, write an objective. Either way, the first line repeats the posting's job title, because recruiters search by title before anything else. Then name your years, the tools the posting lists and 1 measured result.
ATS resume summary formula
Posting's job title with X years in industry, working in 2 to 3 tools the posting names. 1 measured result. Credential the posting names.
Example
Project coordinator with 7 years in civil engineering and utilities, working in Microsoft Project, Procore and Smartsheet. Built a closeout checklist that cut city document returns from 11 to 2 a year. CAPM since 2023.
Don't
Hardworking professional with excellent communication skills and a passion for project success.
Do
Project coordinator with 5 years on commercial construction projects, working in Procore and Primavera P6. Tracked submittals for a $21M medical office build and closed 140 punch list items in 3 weeks.
A recruiter searching for project coordinator, Procore or Primavera P6 finds the second version and none of the first.
How to match ATS keywords from the job description
Keywords are the job titles, skills, tools, degrees and credentials in the posting. Read the requirements list, mark every noun a recruiter could search for, and place each one where it is true on your resume. OPM puts the same advice to federal applicants in one line: "Align language from the job announcement." Each term belongs in the section a recruiter would check for it, as the table shows, and the general rules for using resume keywords apply to every field.
| The posting says | Where it goes | How it reads on the resume |
|---|---|---|
| Experience with Salesforce CRM | Skills, plus 1 line of Work Experience proving it | Updated 40 accounts a week in Salesforce CRM and flagged renewals 90 days out. |
| Accounts payable | Job title line or a bullet | Reconciled vendor statements and cleared 300 accounts payable invoices a week. |
| Bachelor's degree in finance | Education, degree written in full | Bachelor of Science in Finance |
| PMP preferred | Certificates, full name and acronym | Project Management Professional (PMP), Project Management Institute |
| Bilingual English and Spanish | Languages | Spanish: fluent; English: native |
Don't
Salesforce, CRM, Salesforce CRM, customer relationship management, Salesforce administration, Salesforce reports.
Do
Built 12 Salesforce CRM dashboards that the sales team used to track 35 accounts each by renewal date.
One true sentence with the term and a number reads better to a recruiter than a pile of variants.
Work experience bullets for an ATS resume
Write each job the same way: title, employer, city and dates on their own lines, then 3 to 4 bullets for your current job and 1 to 3 for older ones. Spell job titles out in full, since Greenhouse's help center names "Sr. Account Exec instead of Senior Account Executive" as a parse problem. Start each bullet with a verb and put the posting's terms next to a number, following the usual rules for listing work experience on a resume.
Work Experience
- Coordinate schedules, budgets and submittals for 14 water and road projects worth $38M, using Microsoft Project and Procore.
- Cut the average RFI response time from 9 to 4 business days by setting up a shared tracking log in Smartsheet.
- Prepare weekly status reports for 3 project managers and the client's public works staff.
- Assembled closeout packages for 22 completed projects, each checked against the contract's document list.
- Tracked 600+ work orders a quarter in SAP and cleared a backlog of 120 overdue orders in 5 months.
Don't
Sr. AP Spec.: handled invoices and vendor stuff for the company.
Do
Senior Accounts Payable Specialist: processed 1,200 vendor invoices a month in Oracle NetSuite with a 3-way match.
The full title is what a recruiter searches for, and the system name is a second match.
ATS resume skills: exact names for tools and software
Choose 6 to 8 hard skills for your resume from the posting and keep only those a bullet already proves. Write each one as the posting does: Microsoft Excel rather than spreadsheets, QuickBooks Online rather than bookkeeping software. The list below shows that style, with names a recruiter would type into a search.
Hard skills written the way postings name them
- Microsoft Excel
- Salesforce CRM
- SQL
- QuickBooks Online
- Google Analytics 4
- Project scheduling
- Budget tracking
- Inventory management
- Contract administration
- Customer onboarding
Soft skills to prove in a bullet
- Written communication
- Time management
- Attention to detail
- Problem solving
- Stakeholder updates
- Cross-team coordination
Soft skills rarely decide a keyword search, so prove them in a result rather than a list. Where a tool has a version or a new name, use the one in the posting and add the other in brackets only if you used both. Avoid skill bars, star ratings and percentages beside a skill: the parser reads them as noise and the recruiter cannot tell what 80% of Excel means.
PDF or Word: which file an ATS can read
Both, as long as the file holds real text. Greenhouse accepts .doc, .docx, .pdf, .rtf and .txt uploads, and its help center says it cannot parse a resume larger than 2.5MB or one uploaded as an image rather than a document. USAJOBS recommends a PDF to keep the formatting and the page count, with a 5MB limit. Send a PDF or Word resume according to what the posting asks, and a PDF when it says nothing.
To test a PDF, open it and try to highlight a line of text. If you cannot, it is a picture of a resume, often from a scan or a design app's image export, and a parser will read nothing from it. Name the file with your name and the job title, such as Maria-Lopez-Project-Coordinator.pdf, so the recruiter can find it again.
Certifications and education an ATS can match
Recruiters often filter by a required license or certification, so write each one the way the posting does, then once in full. A search for CAPM and a search for Certified Associate in Project Management should both find you. List them under Certificates, newest first, with the issuer and the month you earned each one; a credential still in progress gets the word scheduled or in progress after its date.
| Credential | Issued by | Write it as |
|---|---|---|
| PMP | Project Management Institute (PMI) | Project Management Professional (PMP) |
| CSSGB | ASQ | Certified Six Sigma Green Belt (CSSGB) |
| SHRM-CP | SHRM | SHRM Certified Professional (SHRM-CP) |
| Security+ | CompTIA | CompTIA Security+ |
Certificates
- Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM), Project Management Institute, 04/2023
- Microsoft Office Specialist: Excel Associate, Microsoft, 09/2021
For education, write the degree in full with its field, then the school, its city and the graduation date. The degree name is often matched against the posting's requirement word for word, so Bachelor of Science in Business Administration beats BSBA alone. Add a GPA of 3.5 or higher only in your first 2 years after school.
Education
Federal, entry-level and career-change ATS resumes
Federal jobs have the strictest rules. OPM's guidance limits resumes to 2 pages for every competitive and excepted service announcement under Title 5, and since 09/2025 USAJOBS will not take a longer one; an applicant whose only resume runs past 2 pages is ineligible. Each job also needs its series and grade if it was federal, MM/YYYY start and end dates and the hours you worked per week. USAJOBS suggests 0.5-inch margins and 10-point body text. The federal resume examples show the layout.
With little work history, the parser still needs dated entries to file. Give internships, part-time jobs and volunteer roles the same title, employer, city and date lines as a full-time job, and put the posting's terms in their bullets. The entry-level resume examples use this structure. Evidence that counts:
- Internships: a full Work Experience entry with the tools you used and 1 number.
- Part-time and seasonal jobs: the job title as the employer wrote it, plus the skill the posting shares.
- Volunteer roles: under Volunteer Experience, with dates and what you ran or counted.
- Coursework and certificates: the course or credential name in full, matching the posting's wording.
Don't
Motivated recent graduate seeking an entry-level position where I can grow and learn.
Do
Operations assistant candidate with a 12-week warehouse internship, reconciling 480 inventory records in Microsoft Excel. 2 summers as a camp counselor running schedules for 24 campers.
The second objective carries a job title, a tool and numbers a recruiter can search for.
Changing careers, stay in reverse-chronological order, and use your headline and summary for the new job title, so a title search finds you even though your past titles differ. Under older jobs, keep the bullets whose terms appear in the new posting. The career-change resume examples show how. Explain the move in a cover letter, where a parser and a reader both meet your reason in plain words; writing a cover letter for an ATS follows the same keyword rules.
ATS resume FAQ
Does an ATS automatically reject resumes?
Only when the employer sets it up to. Recruiters choose the filters and knockout questions, such as a required license or work authorization. Federal postings have one firm rule: an applicant whose only resume runs past 2 pages is ineligible. The more common problem is a resume that parses badly and never appears in a recruiter's search.
Can an ATS read a two-column resume?
Some can, but not every system does. Greenhouse lists columned layouts among the resumes it may fail to parse. If you use 2 columns, keep the text real and selectable, put your name and contact details in the body, and check the parsed result before you apply.
Is a PDF or a Word file better for an ATS?
A text-based PDF works in most systems, and USAJOBS recommends one. Send Word only when the posting requests it. Either way, keep the file under 2.5MB, the size above which Greenhouse cannot parse a resume, and never upload a scan or an image.
Should I hide keywords in white text on my resume?
No. Recruiters see the parsed text, so hidden words show up as a block of keywords with no context, and that reads as gaming the system. Put each term in a real bullet or in Skills instead.
How many keywords should an ATS resume have?
As many of the posting's requirements as you can prove, each used once or twice. A good check is the requirements list: every item you meet should appear in a bullet, in Skills or in Certificates, in the posting's words.
Can an ATS read headers and footers?
Not reliably. Greenhouse names headers, footers and text boxes as parse problems, and contact details placed there in particular. Keep your name, phone, email and city in the first lines of the page body, and leave the footer empty or use it only for a page number.
Does a photo hurt an ATS resume?
Yes, it can. Greenhouse lists photos among the elements that make resumes fail to parse, and most US and Canadian resumes carry no photo anyway. Use the space for a summary line or a skill the posting names.
How long can a federal resume be on USAJOBS?
2 pages. Since 09/2025, USAJOBS has restricted all resumes to 2 pages, and under Title 5 an applicant whose only resume is longer is not considered. Some non-Title 5 agencies accept a longer one as an extra document when the announcement says so.
Should I use abbreviations on an ATS resume?
Write the full term once, with the acronym in brackets, then use whichever the posting uses. Job titles go in full: Greenhouse names Sr. Account Exec as an incomplete title it may misread, where Senior Account Executive parses cleanly.
Do I need a different resume for every application?
Not a new one, but a tailored one. Keep a master resume, then for each posting change the headline to its job title, adjust the summary and swap in the bullets and skills its requirements list.
Next steps
Pick the example whose layout and career stage are closest to yours, then rewrite its headline and bullets with the terms from the posting you want. Lay it out in our resume builder or one of our templates, test the upload once, and write your cover letter around the same job title.