What is ATS, and why does your CV format matter?

Short answer: most big employers don't read your CV first. Software does.

The 30-second version

ATS stands for Applicant Tracking System. It's the software that sits behind company career portals (Workday, Greenhouse, Lever, Taleo, iCIMS). When you apply through one of those portals, the ATS parses your CV into structured data before a recruiter sees it.

If the parser mangles your CV, the recruiter sees a mangled candidate profile. That's the whole game.

What trips an ATS up

Tables and multi-column layouts (the parser reads top-to-bottom, left-to-right)
Text inside text boxes, headers, or footers
Icons, graphics, and images used in place of text (e.g. a star rating)
Unusual fonts or heavily custom formatting
PDFs saved as images instead of text

When to pick "ATS Plain" in JAC

Pick the ATS Plain format when you're applying through a company's online portal — Workday, Greenhouse, Lever, SuccessFactors, or any "careers page" that asks you to upload a CV and then re-type everything into form fields. The re-typing is a tell: the form is being populated from your uploaded CV, and the portal will flag gaps when the parser misreads.

Pick a Styled or Word (CV+CL) format when you're emailing a CV directly to a hiring manager or recruiter — there's no parser in the middle, so visual polish helps you stand out.

This page is a placeholder. A fuller guide is on the way — JAC is brand new and the content team is writing up deeper coverage of ATS quirks, per-vendor tips (Workday vs Greenhouse vs Lever), and examples of CVs that pass vs fail. For now, the above is the short version.

Built with JAC — the job application centre. Back to the app.