How to Write a CV That Gets Past ATS in 2026

Over 90% of large companies now use Applicant Tracking Systems to screen CVs before a human ever lays eyes on them. If your CV isn't optimised for these systems, you could be the perfect candidate and still never get a call back.

That's a frustrating reality, but it's also a solvable problem. The rules aren't secret. The systems aren't magic. Once you understand how they actually work, you can write a CV that clears the filter and lands in front of a real person who can pick up the phone.

Here's everything you need to know.

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What Is an ATS and Why Does It Matter?

An Applicant Tracking System is software that scans, parses, and ranks CVs based on keywords, formatting, and relevance to the job description. Systems like Workday, Greenhouse, Lever, and Taleo are used by the majority of mid-to-large employers across the UK, and that number keeps climbing. Even some SMEs now use lighter-weight tools like Breezy or Recruitee.

The mechanism matters. The software doesn't "read" your CV the way a recruiter does. It breaks your document into structured data fields, name, contact details, job titles, dates, skills, and then scores you against a set of weighted criteria drawn from the job description. If your score doesn't clear a threshold, often set somewhere between 60-75% match, you're filtered out before a human ever opens the file.

Here's why that stings: the system has no idea you led a team through a company-wide restructure, or that you increased revenue by a third in your last role. If that achievement isn't described using the right words in the right fields, it might as well not exist. You're not being judged on your career. You're being judged on how accurately your document mirrors a machine's expectations.

That's the core problem. And that's exactly what this guide fixes.

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The Formatting Rules That Actually Matter

This is where most people go wrong first, before they've even thought about content.

Keep it single-column. Full stop. Tables, text boxes, columns, and header/footer sections cause parsing failures in most ATS platforms. The system reads left to right, top to bottom, in a linear flow. If your layout breaks that flow, your data ends up in the wrong fields. A recruiter might see your job title listed where your phone number should be, or your skills section disappearing entirely. Use a clean, single-column Word document with clear spacing between sections.

Fonts should be boring. Arial, Calibri, Garamond, or Times New Roman. Nothing decorative. Decorative fonts occasionally render as garbled characters depending on how the ATS processes the file, and that's a risk with zero upside.

Icons and graphics are invisible to these systems. That little envelope icon next to your email address? The ATS can't read it. The skills bar chart showing you're "80% proficient in Excel"? Ignored entirely, or worse, it creates a parsing error. Strip all of that out.

On file format: unless the application specifically asks for a PDF, submit a.docx file. This is the format most ATS platforms parse most reliably. Newer systems handle PDFs better than they used to, but older enterprise tools, Taleo in particular, are still notoriously unreliable with PDF parsing. When in doubt, go.docx.

One small thing that trips people up constantly: contact details in headers and footers. It's a natural place to put them aesthetically. Plenty of CV templates do it. But many ATS systems skip header and footer content entirely when parsing, which means your name and email address might simply not exist in the system's data. Put your contact information, name, phone number, email, LinkedIn URL, and location (city and county is enough, you don't need your full address), in the main body at the very top of the document.

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Keywords: The Engine Room of Your ATS Score

If formatting is the foundation, keywords are the structure built on top of it. Get this wrong and a perfect format won't save you.

The process is simpler than people make it sound. Copy the job description into a Google Doc. Read through it slowly and highlight every skill, tool, qualification, responsibility, and sector-specific phrase you can find. Then open your CV alongside it and do an honest comparison.

The words need to match precisely. If the job description says "stakeholder management", your CV should say "stakeholder management", not "managing stakeholders" or "stakeholder engagement". Some ATS platforms use semantic matching that can recognise synonyms, but many, particularly older enterprise systems, still run exact-match searches. There's no advantage to paraphrasing, and real risk in doing so.

This is also where sector-specific terminology earns its place. A project manager's CV should include "PRINCE2" or "PMP" if those are listed. A marketing candidate should mirror "SEO", "paid search", and "conversion rate optimisation" if the job description uses them. A finance professional should check whether the role specifies "IFRS", "management accounts", or "variance analysis" and match those terms exactly.

Spell out abbreviations in full the first time you use them, then put the abbreviation in brackets. "Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)" before you use SEO alone. Some systems index the abbreviation, some index the full phrase, so doing both ensures you're covered either way.

A word of warning here, and I mean this seriously: do not include keywords for skills you don't have. It's tempting when you're desperate for an interview, and yes, it might occasionally bump your match score. But the interview will expose it immediately, and you'll have wasted everyone's time including your own. Only mirror keywords that genuinely reflect your experience.

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Writing a Professional Summary That Works Hard

Your summary sits at the top of the document, which means it's typically the first section parsed and the first thing a recruiter reads when they open the shortlisted CVs. It needs to do two jobs at once: satisfy the ATS with relevant keywords and convince the human reader you're worth ten more minutes of their time.

Three to five sentences is the right length. Any shorter and you're wasting prime real estate. Any longer and it stops being a summary.

Here's what to pack in:

Your current or most recent job title, your years of relevant experience, and the sector or specialism you work in. Two or three of your most significant achievements, ideally with numbers attached. And two or three keywords pulled directly from the job description you're targeting.

Here's a worked example for a senior marketing manager role:

"Senior Marketing Manager with eight years of experience in B2B SaaS, specialising in demand generation and content-led growth. Grew inbound pipeline by 65% over 18 months through a full funnel content strategy and SEO overhaul. Led a team of six across the UK and US, managing a combined budget of £1.2m. Now seeking a Head of Marketing role where I can build and scale a high-performing team in a growth-stage environment."

Notice what that does: it includes the role type, the sector, specific results, team leadership, budget responsibility, and a forward-looking statement that signals intent. It's specific enough to be credible. It's human enough to be interesting.

Rewrite your summary for every single application. Yes, every one. It takes fifteen minutes and it's the highest-return fifteen minutes you'll spend in your job search.

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Your Work Experience Section: Structure and Substance

The ATS needs clean, consistent data. Recruiters need to see impact.

For each role, list your job title first (this is one of the primary fields the ATS tries to extract), then the company name, then the dates. Include both the month and year for start and end dates for every role. Missing dates are a red flag to ATS systems and to recruiters. "2019-2022" with no months makes the system work harder to interpret your history, and some platforms will penalise ambiguity in their scoring.

Under each role, lead with achievements rather than a job description copy-paste. The STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, Result) is your framework here, but you don't need to write it out in full STAR paragraphs on your CV. Use it to construct strong bullet points that have a result baked in.

Weak: "Responsible for managing social media accounts." Strong: "Managed organic social across LinkedIn and Instagram, growing combined following by 12,000 in six months and increasing referral traffic to the website by 34%."

The second version contains the same information and then some. It also contains keywords that might appear in a job description. That's the double benefit of achievement-led writing: it satisfies the ATS and persuades the recruiter.

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Testing Your CV Before You Apply

You wouldn't send a client proposal without checking it first. Your CV deserves the same rigour.

Jobscan is the most widely used tool for this. Paste in your CV and the job description, and it gives you a match score along with a breakdown of which keywords are present, missing, or appearing too infrequently. Resume Worded does similar work and also gives readability feedback on your language and structure.

Run your CV through one of these tools against each specific job description before you submit. If your match score is below 60%, go back and identify what's missing. Often it's two or three specific phrases that are easy to add once you know they're absent.

One more test worth doing: copy and paste your CV text into Notepad or a plain text editor. What you see there is roughly what many ATS platforms extract. If your formatting looked fine in Word but the plain text version is a jumble, your layout is more complex than it should be.

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Common Mistakes Worth Calling Out Directly

These come up again and again in the CVs I review, so they're worth stating plainly.

Sending the same CV to every role is probably the single biggest mistake. Tailoring feels tedious, but a generic CV will consistently underperform against a tailored one. Think of it this way: you're not just trying to get any job, you're trying to get a specific job. Your application should reflect that.

Using creative section headings ("My Journey", "What I Bring", "My Toolkit") might feel distinctive. To an ATS, they're just unrecognised strings of text. The system looks for "Work Experience", "Education", "Skills", "Professional Summary". Use those labels.

Leaving gaps unexplained isn't necessarily penalised by the ATS, but it will raise questions for the human reader who follows. If you took time out for caring responsibilities, health, or further study, a brief note alongside the dates is always better than silence.

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Your Pre-Submission Checklist

Before you hit submit, work through this:

• [ ] Single-column layout, no tables, text boxes, or columns
• [ ] Contact details in the document body, not the header or footer
• [ ] Saved as.docx unless PDF is specifically requested
• [ ] Standard section headings (Work Experience, Education, Skills, Professional Summary)
• [ ] Professional summary tailored to this specific role
• [ ] Keywords from the job description naturally incorporated throughout
• [ ] Job titles listed first in each role entry, with month and year dates
• [ ] Achievement-led bullet points with quantified results where possible
• [ ] Abbreviations spelled out in full on first use
• [ ] No images, icons, or graphics
• [ ] Tested against the job description using Jobscan or Resume Worded
• [ ] Proofread, ideally after a break so you're reading it fresh

Getting past the ATS is the first hurdle. It's a technical one, and it's entirely within your control. Once you're through it, the focus shifts to making your content compelling enough that the recruiter picking up your CV wants to pick up the phone. That's a different challenge, and one worth preparing for just as carefully.

But start here. Get the basics right. A brilliant career story told in the wrong format is a career story that nobody reads.

Related reading

• Create a CV with AI free: a step-by-step walkthrough
• Free CV generator UK: build a CV in minutes