ATS Resume Format Guide

• Multiple columns. Text is extracted in stream order, so a two-column layout can interleave your job titles with your skills list. This is the single most damaging formatting choice.
• Text inside tables. Some parsers read tables cell by cell in an order that has nothing to do with the visual layout.
• Content in the header or footer region of the page. A meaningful number of parsers skip these entirely — which is catastrophic if your contact details live there.
• Text inside images. A resume exported as an image extracts as nothing at all.
• Text boxes and floating shapes, which frequently extract out of order or not at all.
• Decorative glyphs and emoji, which extract as "?" or vanish, sometimes merging two bullets into one sentence.

• Bold and italic text. Styling is stripped on extraction; the words survive intact.
• Horizontal rules under section headings. They are drawing operations, not text.
• Color, within reason. Keep text dark for print and contrast reasons, not parsing ones.
• Two pages. There is no parser that truncates at one page. Length is a human attention question.
• Hyperlinks. The visible text is what gets extracted, so write the readable URL rather than hiding it behind "click here".

Parsers segment your resume by matching headings against an internal dictionary. "Work Experience" is recognized everywhere; "Where I've Made an Impact" is recognized nowhere, and everything beneath it may be discarded or filed under the wrong field.

Use the conventional headings: Professional Summary, Skills, Work Experience, Projects, Education, Certifications. Creativity in headings has no upside and a substantial downside.

Parsers apply one date pattern per document. If most of your resume says "Mar 2022" and one role says "03/2022", that role can be read as having no dates at all — which means zero months of experience credited for it.

Pick one format and use it everywhere. "Mon YYYY" is the safest.