GUIDE

How it works on the other side

We only write about things you can verify: what a parser extracts from your file, what a given market expects, and what each of those choices costs.

• What an ATS is, and how it actually reads your resume

  Applicant tracking systems have collected a lot of myths — from „they reject 75% of resumes” to „you have to stuff in keywords”. Here is what can be said about them without guessing.

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• Two-column resumes: what an ATS actually sees

  The best-looking resume templates are two-column. That is exactly the layout an applicant tracking system reads worst — and you can verify it yourself in about a minute, without taking anyone's word for it.

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• Resume in PDF or Word

  The PDF-versus-Word argument matters less than people think. The genuinely dangerous case is a third one: a file that looks perfect on screen and is a blank page to an applicant tracking system.

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• How long should a resume be

  The question gets asked about pages and has to be answered about words — because a page is a unit of typesetting, not of content. The same career fits on one page or sprawls across three, depending on the margins.

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• Should a resume have a photo

  This is one of the few resume questions with a concrete answer — except it is a different answer in each country. The parser is indifferent to your photo; the person on the other side is not.

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• Job ad keywords: required, important, a plus

  A job ad is not a bag of words to copy into your CV. Some parts describe the candidate and some describe the company — and a system that compares your CV with the ad should know the difference. Here is how our engine reads an ad, and what that means for you.

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