Most employers run applications through recruitment software before anyone opens the file. That software pulls out your name, your job titles, your dates and your skills. When a CV puts those inside a sidebar, a table or an image, the software either misreads them or misses them, and the CV that reaches the recruiter is missing the parts you cared about most.
These templates are laid out so the software reads them the way you wrote them. Content in one main column, headings as real text, standard section names, and dates written the same way throughout.
You fill it in the browser, change template whenever you like without retyping, and see your ATS score and the gap list free once you sign in. There are 99 templates. The finished CV, the templates and the PDF and Word download are Pro.
Paste the job advert if you have it and the AI writes your profile and skills against what the advert actually asks for, using only the detail you entered yourself.
A person reads a CV in the order the design leads them. Software reads it in the order the file stores it, then tries to sort what it found into fields: name, contact details, employers, titles, dates, education, skills. Anything it cannot place is discarded or flattened into text nobody searches.
That gap between visual order and file order is where good looking CVs lose. A sidebar sitting to the left of your job history is not read first because it appears first, it is read wherever it happens to sit in the document structure, which is often the very end.
The practical consequence is not a rejection. It is that you never appear in the recruiter’s filtered list, because the field they filtered on came back empty for you. Nobody tells you that happened.
Every rule below exists because it breaks something specific, not because a template designer prefers plain pages.
The word CV means different documents in different places, and the same file will not suit all of them. What follows is convention rather than law, and it changes what a recruiter expects to see rather than what the parser can read.
The fastest manual test costs nothing. Open the PDF, select all the text, copy it, and paste it into a plain text editor. What you see is roughly what the parser sees. If your name is missing, if the dates have slid away from their employers, or if the skills have landed in the middle of a job description, the layout is the problem and not the wording.
Second test: read only the top third of page one. That is what a recruiter looks at before deciding. If it does not carry your current title, the two strongest pieces of evidence and the skills the advert names, move things until it does.
Third test: take one requirement from the advert and search your own CV for the exact phrase it uses. If the phrase is not there and the experience is, rewrite that line in the advert’s words. Do this for the three or four requirements listed first, which are usually the ones filtered on.
Our checker runs the same idea automatically. It parses your CV the way a system would, scores what it managed to extract, and lists what is missing against the posting you paste in. The score and the gap list are free once you sign in.
An applicant tracking system is the software an employer uses to receive and sort applications. It reads your CV into a structured profile, then recruiters search and filter those profiles. Your CV has to survive that read before a person sees it.
No. The ATS score, the gap list and a blurred preview are free once you sign in. The finished CV, all 99 templates and the PDF and Word download are Pro at $16.99 a month or $99 a year.
A photo does not usually break parsing, but it carries no information the software can use and in some countries it invites bias complaints. In the UK, Ireland and the US, leave it out. In much of continental Europe it is normal and optional.
Pick one format and keep it everywhere, for example 03/2021 to 08/2024. Mixed formats and words like present in one entry and now in another are a common reason a system records a gap that is not there.
Two pages is normal for most experienced applicants and one page is right early on. What matters more is that the top of page one carries your current title, your best evidence and the skills the advert asks for.
The layout will. The wording should not be identical, because the software scores against the advert in front of it. Changing the profile and the skills to match each advert is the single change that moves an ATS score most.
Sign in free and check your ATS score. You pay only for the finished CV, the downloads and the full template set.
Built by Moustafa Tarabya at DT Nova