What an applicant tracking system reads

An applicant tracking system (ATS) is the software an employer uses to receive, store, and sort applications. It is closer to a filing system with a search bar than to a judge. Whether a person reads your application depends on what happens in three steps: the system parses it, filters it, and makes it findable.

Parsing: your file becomes text

When you upload a resume, the system pulls the text out of the file and tries to sort it into fields: name, contact details, each job with its title and dates, education, skills. Everything after this step works on that text, not on the page you designed.

Parsing goes wrong in predictable ways:

• Text inside an image, including a scanned PDF, is not text. It is read as nothing.
• Tables and multiple columns can be read across the page, line by line, mixing two sections together.
• Some systems skip a document's header and footer, so contact details placed there can go missing.
• Unusual section names ("Where I've been" for experience) leave the system guessing what the section holds.

A plain, single-column layout with standard section headings parses well almost everywhere.

Filtering: the screening questions

Many applications ask a few questions before or after the upload: whether you are authorized to work in the country, whether you can work on site, whether you hold a required license. An employer can set some of these as knockout questions, where one answer removes the application before anyone looks at it. This is the most direct automatic rejection in most systems, and it has nothing to do with your resume.

Searching and ranking: being found

Recruiters work through applications by searching and sorting them. They search for a skill, a tool, a title, or a degree, much as you would search your email. Some systems also compare each resume to the posting and show a match score or a ranking.

Either way, the words on your resume decide whether it shows up. If the posting asks for "client relations" and your resume says only "customer success", a search for the posting's term may not find you, even though you have the experience.

Then a person reads it

The system does not hire anyone. Once an application is through the filters and near the top of a search, a recruiter opens it and skims. So the page has to work twice: as clean text for the software, and as a quick read for a person who wants to see what you did and what came of it.

What this means for your application

• Use a layout that parses: one column, standard headings, real text.
• Answer screening questions truthfully, and read them carefully. They are the fastest way to be filtered out.
• Use the posting's own words for the skills and experience you have.
• Write for the person who reads it next: lead each entry with what you achieved.

In Applican, the technical half of a resume's score checks the first and third of these against the posting you attach.