How to Write a CV That Passes ATS Screening

Writing a CV that passes ATS screening is the most over-sold problem in job hunting. An entire industry exists to fix it, and most of what that industry tells you cannot be traced to any source. We checked the claims against what the software vendors themselves publish. Here is what holds up.

The Short Answer

Mainstream applicant tracking systems are databases with a search box, not robot gatekeepers scoring your CV. What actually costs you interviews is a layout the software cannot read properly, and application-form answers that filter you out. Fix those two things and you have done almost everything that matters.

The Claim at the Centre of the Industry

You have seen it: 75% of CVs are never seen by a human because the ATS rejects them.

We went looking for the source. There isn’t one. The figure is attributed variously to a defunct company, to a news outlet, and to a CV-checking tool, and none of those attributions leads to a study. It is the load-bearing statistic of the CV-rewriting business and it appears to have no provenance whatsoever.

What the vendors actually document is much duller. Workday’s own administrator guide describes resume parsing as a feature that “populates fields from a resume” — data entry, not judgement. Greenhouse’s candidate search is a Boolean text search that a recruiter has to deliberately switch on, supporting AND, OR, NOT and wildcards. Ashby’s is the same. None of them documents a score attached to your application, and you cannot be auto-rejected by a number that does not exist.

Where Rejection Actually Happens

Automatic filtering is real — it just doesn’t work on your CV text. It works on the application form: work authorisation, location, years of experience, required certifications, licence status. Those are structured fields, and structured fields are what filters act on.

This reverses the usual advice. Most people spend three hours on the CV and ninety seconds on the form. The form is the part that can knock you out before anyone looks.

What Genuinely Breaks the Parser

Greenhouse publishes an explicit list of what defeats its parser. This is the most useful document in the entire subject, and almost nobody cites it:

Files larger than 2.5 MB — cannot be parsed at all
Graphics, photos and word art
Image-based CVs — a scan or a photo of a document rather than a real text file
Tables, headers and footers
Contact details placed in a header, footer or text box
Multi-column layouts and inconsistent section formatting
Letter-spaced text — spacing applied between individual letters
Template placeholder text left in, such as “First Last” or “Company 1”

Note what Greenhouse says the consequence is: a partial parse that “will need to be manually corrected and verified” by a person. Degraded data, not rejection. But a recruiter searching a database of correctly-parsed candidates will not find the one whose job titles landed in the wrong field.

The trap worth knowing: Greenhouse accepts uploads up to 100 MB but only parses files under 2.5 MB. A photo-heavy CV uploads successfully, shows you a confirmation screen, and silently fails to parse. You will never be told.

PDF or Word?

Greenhouse supports .doc, .docx, .pdf, .rtf and .txt, and expresses no preference. Its parsing-failure guidance blames layout, never file format.

So the rule “never send a PDF” is not supported by any vendor documentation we could find. What is true is that a scanned or image-based PDF fails completely — and that is almost certainly where the folklore came from. A single-column, text-based PDF under 2.5 MB is safe, and it protects your formatting in a way Word does not.

The one exception: if an employer’s portal lists only Word formats, do what it says.

Keywords, Correctly Understood

Since recruiters run Boolean searches, your CV needs to contain the literal strings a recruiter would type. That is a different instruction from “add keywords”, and it has three practical consequences.

Write acronyms both ways. A search for “SEO” will not match “Search Engine Optimisation” and vice versa. Write “Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)” once and you match both.

Once is enough. Boolean search returns matches, not rankings. A term is present or it is absent. Repeating “project management” nine times achieves nothing except making you look desperate to the human who reads it.

White-text keyword stuffing is self-defeating, and not for the reason usually given. Recruiters review candidates in the system’s parsed-text view, where font colour does not exist. Your hidden keywords display as ordinary visible text to precisely the person you were hiding them from. It also reads as deception, which ends the conversation.

About Those “ATS Score” Checkers

Tools like Jobscan give you a match percentage and suggest aiming for 80%. Jobscan’s own wording is that its algorithm is “based off of top applicant tracking systems” — it does not claim to reproduce any real system’s score, and it acknowledges that a human decides.

That is worth reading carefully. Workday, Greenhouse and Ashby document parsing, Boolean search and filters. None documents a percentage match attached to an inbound application. There is no number inside the software for the checker’s number to correspond to.

These tools still have one genuine use. If a checker cannot extract your job titles and dates, that is real evidence your layout is breaking a parser — the problem from the section above, and worth fixing. The parse preview is useful. The percentage is theatre.

Two Rules That Turn Out to Be Folklore

“Recruiters spend six seconds on your CV.” The source is an eye-tracking study by a job board, updated in 2018 to 7.4 seconds. We read the original. It discloses no sample size, no number of recruiters, no industries, no confidence intervals and no limitations. It has been repeated widely, including by career sites across our region, but repetition is not replication. It also measures the initial triage glance, not how long anyone considers you.

“Your CV must be one page.” There is no credible evidence for this outside American entry-level convention. The one study on the question — run by a CV-writing company, so treat it carefully — found recruiters preferred two-page CVs by a wide margin at mid and senior level. Two pages is defensible once you have real experience.

Local CV, International CV: Keep Two

This is where generic advice fails readers in Lagos, Accra, Nairobi, Manila, Delhi and Lahore, and the difference is not cosmetic.

The UK’s National Careers Service tells applicants not to include age, date of birth, marital status or nationality. In the United States, the EEOC states that questions about marital status and children “may violate Title VII”. That matters more than etiquette: in the US, information you volunteer creates legal exposure for the employer. A CV carrying a photo and marital status does not look old-fashioned to a US recruiter — it looks like a liability.

Here is the part that surprised us. The region’s own major job boards now advise the same. JobStreet in the Philippines says a photo is “not necessary” and that age, marital status and religion can go. BrighterMonday in Kenya advises excluding age, area of residence and marital status. Naukri in India calls a photo optional and generally unnecessary in corporate sectors, warning it invites bias.

So the old assumption that local employers expect full bio-data may be going stale. We could not find authoritative current guidance for Ghana or Pakistan, so we are not going to assert norms for those markets.

The NYSC exception. For Nigerian applicants, NYSC status is not a personal detail — it is an eligibility fact, equivalent to work authorisation, because most Nigerian employers cannot hire you without it. It belongs on your Nigerian CV. It is meaningless noise on a UK or US one.

Your international version drops: photo, date of birth, age, marital status, religion, nationality, state of origin, father’s name, gender and full home address. Keep city and country.

What About AI Screening?

AI has genuinely arrived in these systems, and it is narrower than the panic suggests. Ashby’s AI-assisted application review evaluates applications against criteria the employer configures and flags blank or unrelated answers — its documentation says it assesses whether questions were answered, not answer quality. Workday ships an AI recruiting product that performs candidate grading, though its datasheet discloses no methodology.

Regulation is catching up. New York City’s Local Law 144 has required bias audits, published results and candidate notice since July 2023. The EU AI Act classifies systems that filter job applications as high-risk; the obligations for that category apply from December 2027, not 2026, despite what many consultancy blogs still say. And a US collective action against Workday under age-discrimination law was preliminarily certified in May 2025 — a procedural finding that the claims are plausible, not a finding of discrimination.

None of this changes what you should do. It just means algorithmic recommendation exists and is contested.

The Checklist That Is Actually Supported

Single column. No tables, no text boxes, no headers or footers
Contact details in the body of the document, on the first line
Text-based file under 2.5 MB. Never a scan or a photo of a document
PDF is fine. Obey the portal if it demands otherwise
Include the literal search terms for your field, acronym and expansion, once each
Fill the application form carefully — it is the part that can genuinely knock you out
Reverse-chronological order, with dates. This is convention rather than proven, but concealed dates read as evasion
Two versions, local and international

ATS CV FAQ

Do applicant tracking systems really reject 75% of CVs?

We could find no traceable source for that figure. Vendor documentation from Workday, Greenhouse and Ashby describes parsing, Boolean search and human-operated filters — not automated rejection on CV content.

Should I send my CV as a PDF or Word document?

Either. Greenhouse supports both and states no preference. Layout is the variable, not format. A single-column, text-based PDF under 2.5 MB is safe; a scanned PDF fails completely.

Are ATS score checkers accurate?

No documented applicant tracking system produces a percentage match score for the checkers to replicate. Their parse preview is genuinely useful for spotting layout problems; the percentage corresponds to nothing.

Should I put a photo on my CV?

Not on an international CV. Photos are also now discouraged by major job boards across our region, including JobStreet in the Philippines and Naukri in India, because they invite bias. Photos additionally break parsing.

Does keyword stuffing help?

No. Boolean search returns matches rather than rankings, so a term is present or absent and repetition adds nothing. Hidden white text is worse than useless — recruiters read parsed text views where font colour does not exist.

How long should my CV be?

There is no credible evidence for a one-page rule outside US entry-level convention. Two pages is defensible for mid-career and above. Length is far less important than whether the document parses.

Should I include my NYSC status?

On a Nigerian CV, yes — it functions as an eligibility fact, since most employers cannot hire you without it or an exemption. On an international CV, leave it out.

Your Next Step

Open your CV and check three things: is it one column, are your contact details in the body rather than a header, and is the file under 2.5 MB. That is most of the real problem solved in about four minutes.

Then build the international version. Our guides to visa-sponsored jobs in Canada, high-paying jobs in the UAE and Germany’s skilled worker routes cover where to send it — and if you would rather earn abroad without moving, legitimate remote jobs you can start in 2026 needs the same document.

Last reviewed: 22 September 2026, against published documentation from Workday, Greenhouse and Ashby, the UK National Careers Service, the US EEOC, and regional job boards. Where a widely repeated claim had no traceable source, we have said so rather than repeating it.

KINGNAMY never charges fees and does not sell CV services. This guide exists so you do not need to buy one.