How to Write a CV That Gets Past ATS Systems

You spent hours crafting the perfect CV. You hit submit. And then... silence. No interview call, no rejection email, just nothing.

There's a good chance your CV never reached a person. Before a recruiter in Dublin, Cork or London opens it, software reads it first. If that software can't parse your layout, you're filtered out with no rejection email and no reason given.

This is the hidden filter most Irish and UK job seekers don't know exists. Here's what breaks it, and how to fix it without making your CV ugly.

What an ATS Actually Does

An Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is software companies use to manage job applications. Think of it as a gatekeeper. When you submit your CV online, the ATS:

1. Parses your document — extracting text, contact details, work history, and skills
2. Categorises the information into structured fields
3. Scores your application against the job description
4. Ranks you alongside other candidates

Only the top-ranked CVs get forwarded to a human recruiter. Popular platforms include Workday, Greenhouse, Lever, iCIMS and Taleo. Each parses slightly differently, but the principles for getting through them are the same.

The problem is this: if the ATS can't parse your CV properly, all that carefully written experience gets scrambled or missed entirely. You might have exactly the right background, but if the parser can't read it, you're rejected before a recruiter knows you applied.

This happens silently. No rejection email explains that your two-column layout broke the parser. You just never hear back.

The Formatting That Silently Breaks Parsing

Here's what kills ATS compatibility, even though it looks fine to you:

Columns and tables. Many popular CV templates use two columns or tables to fit more on one page. The ATS reads left-to-right, top-to-bottom. A two-column layout gets read as one long jumbled line — your job title from the left column lands next to a skill from the right, and the parser treats that skill as your job title. The whole CV becomes nonsense.

Text boxes and graphics. Anything inside a text box, shape or graphic is often invisible to the parser. If your contact details live in a header text box, the ATS might not extract your email address at all.

Headers and footers. Some ATS software ignores them entirely. Keep every piece of critical information in the main body of the document.

Non-standard fonts and symbols. Decorative fonts, icons and special characters confuse older parsers. Stick to Arial, Calibri or Times New Roman, and replace icon bullets with plain text bullets.

Creative section headings. The parser looks for conventional labels. "My Journey" or "What I Bring" mean nothing to it. Use:

• Work Experience (or Professional Experience)
• Education
• Skills
• Certifications (if applicable)
• Summary (or Professional Summary)

Irish recruiters cite poorly formatted CVs as the number one rejection reason. What they usually mean is that the ATS couldn't parse it, so they never looked at it in the first place. Our complete guide to CV formatting covers the layout, fonts and spacing that survive parsing in more depth.

The Keyword Match You're Failing

The ATS doesn't just parse structure. It also matches keywords from the job description against your CV content.

If the posting asks for "stakeholder management" and your CV says "worked with stakeholders," you might not match. The system looks for exact or very close phrasing — especially for technical skills, qualifications and industry-specific terms. If they say "Python," write "Python," not "programming languages."

How to fix it:

Read the job description three times before you write a word. Highlight the hard skills (tools, languages, methodologies), the soft skills, the qualifications, and the action verbs they use. Those are your target keywords.

Then mirror that language in your CV wherever it honestly applies. If they say "project coordination" and you have that experience, use those exact words rather than your own paraphrase.

Create a dedicated Skills section listing technical skills, software, methodologies and certifications in a clear bulleted or comma-separated format. That gives the parser an easy place to extract and match.

And tailor the CV to each role. A generic CV sent to 50 jobs will underperform one rewritten to match the specific language of the posting — which is the whole argument for matching your CV to the job description rather than sending the same file everywhere.

One warning. Don't try to game this by hiding keywords in white text or cramming in every buzzword you can find. Modern ATS platforms detect it, and it can flag your application as spam. Only include keywords that genuinely reflect your experience.

File Format and Export

If the job posting specifies a format, follow it. That instruction overrides everything below.

Otherwise, a clean Word .docx file is the safest universal choice — every ATS parses it, including older systems still in use at agencies. A PDF exported directly from your source document is also fine for modern platforms, provided it contains real selectable text rather than an image.

What to avoid outright:

• Scanned or image-based PDFs — the parser sees a picture, not words
• PDFs exported from design tools like Canva or Figma, which often bury text in graphic layers
• .pages, .odt and other formats many systems reject on sight
• Password-protected files — some ATS software can't open them and rejects automatically

Export from the original document every time. Don't run a Word file through a random online converter; export directly from Word, Google Docs or whatever you wrote it in. That keeps the text layer clean and machine-readable.

Structure Your CV Correctly

A clean, ATS-friendly structure looks like this:

1. Contact Information — name, phone, email, LinkedIn URL, in the body and not in tables or text boxes
2. Professional Summary — 2-3 sentences with key skills and experience level
3. Work Experience — reverse chronological, with company, job title, dates and bullet points
4. Education — degree, institution, graduation year
5. Skills — a clean list of relevant hard and soft skills
6. Certifications — if applicable

Weave the job description's keywords into your bullet points naturally. Compare:

Bad: "Responsible for various tasks related to marketing activities"

Good: "Managed digital marketing campaigns across Google Ads and Meta, increasing lead generation by 35% in Q3 2025"

The second version carries specific keywords — digital marketing, Google Ads, Meta, lead generation — while also demonstrating impact with numbers. The ATS looks for the keywords; the recruiter reading the top-ranked CVs looks for the impact. Numbers serve both:

• "Reduced customer churn by 18% through targeted retention campaigns"
• "Managed a team of 12 engineers across 3 time zones"
• "Delivered €2.4M project 2 weeks ahead of schedule"

Keep dates in one consistent format throughout, such as "Jan 2024 – Present."

The 'Looks Fine to Me' Trap

Here's the frustrating part: your CV looks perfect when you open it. The layout is clean, the fonts are readable, your experience is clearly presented. So why the rejections?

Because what you see is not what the ATS sees.

When you view your CV as a human, you see a designed document. When the ATS parses it, it sees raw text extraction. If your two-column template gets read as a single scrambled column, the output is gibberish — and you will never see that gibberish unless you go looking for it.

This is why candidates in Ireland and the UK apply to dozens of roles with a CV they believe is strong and hear nothing back. The CV is strong. The format is broken.

Test Before You Send

Don't guess whether your CV parses. Check it:

1. The copy-paste test. Select all the text in your CV and paste it into a plain text editor. If the content appears garbled or out of order, the ATS will have exactly the same problem.
2. The keyword check. Put your CV beside the job description. Are the key terms actually present, in the posting's own words?
3. The file check. Save as .docx, re-open it, and confirm the formatting holds.

For a fuller view, our free CV check shows what a parser extracts from your document and where the formatting is losing you, in about 60 seconds — whether your contact details, job titles, dates and experience are being read properly, or scrambled by your layout. No card needed.

Plenty of tools will do step 2 and stop there, which is worth knowing before you pay for one: how the main CV tools differ on what they actually do for you sets out where keyword scanning ends and a rewrite begins.

The Bottom Line

ATS optimisation isn't about tricking a system — it's about communicating clearly. A well-structured CV with relevant keywords and quantified achievements will pass the ATS and hold up in front of the recruiter on the other side.

Worth saying plainly, though: passing the ATS is the floor, not the finish line. Most CVs clear the filter and still hear nothing, because what decides a callback is rarely the filter itself — it's whether the brief human scan that follows finds anything worth stopping for.

Fix the formatting. Simplify the layout. Mirror the job description's language. Export cleanly. Then send it.

Ai-Vitae rewrites your CV against the specific job you're applying for, formatted to parse cleanly and written in the language recruiters are scanning for. Not a template, and not text you still have to format yourself.

Get your ATS-ready CV →