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Most medium and large employers now use an applicant tracking system, or ATS, to collect and sort applications. Before a recruiter opens your CV, the software reads it, pulls out your details and ranks it against the job description. A CV that confuses the software can end up at the bottom of the pile, however good you are.
The good news: getting past an ATS is mostly about clarity. Here are seven checks to run before you click send.
1. Use the words from the job offer
If the offer asks for "stakeholder management", write "stakeholder management", not "working with partners". Matching is literal. Read the offer, note the skills and tools it repeats, and make sure the ones you genuinely have appear in your CV, ideally in your experience as well as your skills list.
2. Keep the layout simple
Tables, text boxes and icons used as headings can scramble the order in which software reads your CV. For online applications, a clean one or two-column layout made of real text works best. Keep the creative designs for CVs you hand over in person.
3. Use standard section headings
Stick to Experience, Education, Skills and Languages. Clever headings such as "Where I've made an impact" look nice to people but can stop the software finding your work history.
4. Put your job title near the top
Recruiters often search by job title. A clear title under your name that matches the role you want, for example "Product Manager", helps you show up in those searches.
5. Write achievements, not duties
The ATS gets you seen; a person decides. Turn duties into results: "Cut support tickets by 30% by launching self-serve dashboards" says far more than "Responsible for dashboards".
6. Send a PDF unless asked otherwise
Modern systems read text-based PDFs well, and a PDF keeps your layout intact. Just check that the text is real text you can select, not a picture of your CV.
7. Check the match before you apply
Compare your CV with the job offer to see which keywords are missing and how well it lines up. Fill the gaps that are true for you, and never add skills you don't have: interviews find that out quickly.
A CV that clearly matches the job beats a beautiful one the software can't read.
Try it on your own CV
In CVMaster, open your CV, go to Job match and paste the offer. In about a minute you get your ATS score, the keywords you're missing and suggestions to tailor your CV to that job. Every layout marked ATS-friendly is built to be read cleanly by tracking systems.
A CV that gets you the interview.
Build it in minutes, tailor it to the job, and see how well it matches, before you apply.
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