Using ATS-Friendly Resume Templates: What to Look For

Resume templates look very different on screen than they perform inside an ATS. A visually stunning two-column design with a sidebar skills section may win compliments from friends but fail silently in Workday, Taleo, or Greenhouse. Understanding which design elements cause parsing problems — and which ensure clean extraction — is essential for any job seeker applying through online portals.

Design Elements That Cause ATS Failures

The most common parsing problems stem from a small set of design decisions that look fine visually but confuse ATS parsers at the text-extraction level.

Two-column layouts are the biggest culprit. When ATS systems parse a two-column resume, they often read across columns rather than down them, producing nonsensical text that scrambles your work history. The ATS might read your job title from column one and your education institution from column two as if they belong to the same entry.

Tables create similar problems — many parsers either skip table content entirely or concatenate it incorrectly. Text boxes and image elements containing text are almost always invisible to parsers, meaning any content placed in them simply disappears from the parsed record.

What an ATS-Friendly Template Should Include

Single-Column Layout

A single-column layout reads linearly from top to bottom, which mirrors how ATS parsers extract text. Every section flows in a predictable order that allows the system to correctly identify your name, contact details, experience entries, and education.

Standard Section Headers

Use headers that ATS systems are trained to recognize: "Professional Experience" or "Work Experience," "Education," "Skills," "Certifications," "Summary" or "Professional Summary." Avoid creative alternatives like "Career Highlights" or "My Toolkit" — these may confuse the parser's field-mapping logic.

• Choose single-column layouts for any ATS-submitted application
• Avoid tables, text boxes, sidebars, and headers/footers for content
• Use standard bullet characters (•) rather than custom icons or symbols
• Keep fonts from the standard set: Calibri, Arial, Times New Roman, Georgia
• Avoid graphics, logos, and photo elements — most ATS systems ignore or flag these
• Test any template through a free ATS simulator before using it for real applications

You Don't Have to Sacrifice Aesthetics

ATS-friendly does not mean visually boring. Clean typography, strategic use of white space, subtle color in section headers, and strong visual hierarchy can all coexist with ATS compatibility — as long as the underlying structure remains simple and linear.

All of ApplyGlide's resume templates are built from the ground up for ATS compatibility, tested against the major platforms used by Fortune 500 companies, so you can choose an attractive design without worrying about what the parser sees on the other side.