Getting a job
ATS-friendly CV: what it means and how to make one
What an applicant tracking system does with your CV (or resume), what trips it up, and how to make a CV the software and the recruiter can both read.
9 min readUpdated 14 October 2026
Short answer
What an ATS-friendly CV (or resume) means
An applicant tracking system (ATS) is the software an employer uses to run its hiring. Workday (opens in a new window), which makes one, calls it software that “supports recruiters and employers through the entire hiring journey”: one database that holds every candidate. When you apply through a company's careers page, your file goes into it.
A CV is ATS-friendly when that software can read it as text, in the order you wrote it, and put each part in the right field: your name, your contact details, each job with its dates, your skills. It describes the file, not you.
The two words in the heading mean one document: Indeed (opens in a new window) gives the same help article one name for British readers and the other for American ones. India uses both. Gulf employers mostly say CV, and so do we from here on.
Software of this kind is common at large employers. In a Harvard Business School and Accenture survey of 2,275 executives in the US, the UK and Germany, 63% of employers used a recruitment management system (58% in the UK; the report (opens in a new window)). Jobscan, which sells CV scanning, found an ATS behind the careers sites of 487 of the 500 largest US companies (its count (opens in a new window), published in August 2026 and read from the sites, not asked of the companies). Neither figure covers the Gulf: Dubai is further down.
What the software does with your CV
It does three things, and only the first depends on your layout.
- 1
It copies your CV into fields
A parser reads the file and fills in a profile. Oracle's Taleo (opens in a new window) lists what it takes: your name, address, phone and email; each qualification with its dates and institution; each job with its dates, employer and job function. The parser is often another company's engine: SAP SuccessFactors uses Textkernel's (SAP (opens in a new window)). Whatever lands in the wrong field is missing when a recruiter searches. - 2
Recruiters search and rank what it read
Workday (opens in a new window) says many platforms “rank candidates by match percentage based on the job description”. In the UAE, Bayt (opens in a new window) says hiring managers use systems that “scan for keywords from the job description”, and that a CV in the ad's own words ranks higher. No vendor we read publishes a mark you have to reach. - 3
It acts on your answers to the application questions
This is where automatic rejection is documented. Greenhouse's Auto-Reject (opens in a new window) “uses custom application questions to screen and reject candidates based on their responses”; its own example is a rule that rejects with the reason “Needs Visa”. Workable (opens in a new window) offers knockout questions with a yes or no answer (its example: “Are you based in the UK?”) and says a candidate it disqualifies still gets the confirmation email and “does not know that they have been disqualified”.
So answer the visa, location and notice questions with care: they decide more than your layout does. Employers set filters of their own, too: in the Harvard survey, almost half the companies screened out CVs with a gap of more than 6 months (the report (opens in a new window)).
What trips the parser
The same few things come up across the vendors' documentation we read. Greenhouse (opens in a new window) publishes the clearest list of reasons a CV fails to parse. Words in quotation marks are the vendors' own.
- Columns
- Greenhouse lists CVs “that have a columned layout”. Textkernel (opens in a new window), which makes a parser, explains why: read from left to right, “the information from different sections of the CV is mixed together”. It estimates that at least 15% of CVs use columns; in its own test of about 700, a new version raised the share whose text came out in order from 62% to 90%. So parsers are improving, and LHH (opens in a new window), a recruiter, says there is evidence that CVs with graphics and tables are “parsed just as well as those without” (it names no study). Sources disagree, so our check says you should change columns, not that you must.
- Tables, headers, footers and text boxes
- Greenhouse lists “tables, headers, and footers”, and “the name and contact information in the header, footer, or text box”. Vendors differ on headers: RChilli (opens in a new window), another parser maker, says a parser “cannot read information in headers”; Oracle says Taleo “can detect text in the header and footer”. You can't know which system will read yours, so keep your name, email and phone in the body of the page.
- Pictures, icons and text saved as a picture
- Greenhouse lists “graphics, photos, or word art” and files “uploaded as an image, rather than a document”. Lever (opens in a new window) “cannot parse information from image files (like JPG or PNG)”; Workday (opens in a new window) advises files without “images or image-based styles”. An icon in place of the word Phone or Email is a picture too.
- Odd section headings and spaced-out letters
- Greenhouse lists CVs “without clear sections and differing formats throughout each section”, and text with “spaces between the letters”. RChilli lists “Missing headings” and “Unusual heading” as faults. LHH recommends standard names such as “Work Experience”, “Education” and “Skills”.
- Dates and short job titles
- RChilli says a year on its own “will not be considered as a Job period”: give the month and year each role started and ended. Write titles in full too: Greenhouse's example of one that parses badly is “Sr. Account Exec instead of Senior Account Executive”.
- Fonts and file size
- No vendor page we read names a font it can't read; LHH says “Most fonts are parsed effectively by the majority of ATS software”. The real risk is a font that can't be embedded in a PDF: Word then offers “Bitmap text when fonts may not be embedded”, which saves the text as pictures (Microsoft (opens in a new window)). On size, Greenhouse can't parse a file larger than 2.5 MB.
People on r/dubai disagree about columns in the same way:
“these systems may not fully be able to capture the right data from your CV if the design is overly complex or non-conventional.”
“any reasonably good ATS does a very good job at parsing information from a resume even with multiple columns and shaded portions.”
How to make an ATS-friendly CV, step by step
Start in a word processor, not a design tool, and work down this list. These are the 12 checks our free ATS check runs, the most serious first, each with the reason and its sources.
Must fix
Name, email and phone in the body of the page
Put your name, email and phone number as ordinary text at the top of the page, not in the header or footer and not in a text box.
Why, and the sources: Name, email and phone in the body of the page
A small file
Keep the file under 2.5 MB: remove embedded images and export the PDF at standard quality.
A Word file or a PDF with real text
Send a .docx, or a PDF exported from your editor so the text can be selected. A scanned page or a CV saved as an image has no text for the software to read.
Month and year for every role
Give each role a start and end month and year. Years alone look like a gap is being hidden.
Should fix
Newest role first, one date format
List roles from the most recent backwards and write every date the same way (month and year, ending in Present for the current role).
Two pages, three only for long careers
Keep it to 2 pages; 3 only with more than 15 years of experience. Cut older roles to a line rather than shrinking the font.
Why, and the sources: Two pages, three only for long careers
No spaced-out letters, icons for words or text in images
Write headings as normal words, not S P A C E D letters. Use words instead of icons for phone and email, and keep text out of pictures and word art.
Why, and the sources: No spaced-out letters, icons for words or text in images
Standard section headings
Use plain headings the software knows (Summary, Experience, Education, Skills, Certifications) and format them all the same way.
One column, no tables for experience or skills
Lay the CV out in a single column, top to bottom. Keep experience and skills out of tables and text boxes; a sidebar is the usual culprit.
Why, and the sources: One column, no tables for experience or skills
A reachable phone number with the country code
Give a number you answer, with the plus sign and your country code, plus WhatsApp if you use it. Never a fake UAE number: a UAE line needs an Emirates ID.
Why, and the sources: A reachable phone number with the country code
Nice to have
Plain styling: few fonts, no colour blocks
Use at most 2 fonts, black text on white, and bullets instead of coloured boxes or graphics.
Why, and the sources: Plain styling: few fonts, no colour blocks
No photo in the version you upload to company sites
If you use a photo at all, keep it for the version you send to local recruiters or Bayt. Leave it out of the file you upload to company careers sites.
Why, and the sources: No photo in the version you upload to company sites
Then save it as a Word file, or as a PDF exported from the word processor, never a scan or a photo of the page. CV as PDF or Word: which file to send says which to pick.
This page has no template on purpose. The free one, in Word and PDF, is in the Dubai CV format guide, with what a Gulf CV contains. For the words themselves, see Software engineer CV for Dubai: what to show and what to cut and the summary at the top of your CV.
Check your own file before you send it
Three tests, a minute each:
- Select the text. Lever's test is to “try highlighting text in the document with your cursor. If you cannot highlight text, the document is likely not parseable.”
- Upload it to the free ATS check, which reads the file with our own code: no AI, nothing stored. Without an account you see how many of the 12 checks passed, the file's facts (pages, text layer, columns, contact details, fonts) and the top 3 things to change. A free account adds every issue and “What an ATS reads”: your first lines as you wrote them, next to the order a simple parser reads them.
- Read the form a careers site fills in from your CV: what it got wrong is what its parser got wrong. On Bayt, an uploaded CV fills your profile, but “sometimes it is added incorrectly”, says a University of Warwick guide to the site (opens in a new window).
Our check gives no score, doesn't compare your CV with a job ad and doesn't judge the words. Whether your bullets show results and the CV fits the Dubai market is the job of the paid CV review.
What the software doesn't do
- It doesn't throw out 75% of CVs before a person sees them: we found no study behind that figure. Fortune wrote (opens in a new window) that it “probably came from a study by” Preptel, a firm that sold a CV optimisation service; the article that introduced the firm (opens in a new window) describes no such study, and we found no method or sample anywhere.
- Where vendors document a failed parse, it isn't a rejection. Greenhouse says a partial parse “will need to be manually corrected and verified”; Lever says a recruiter “can manually add information by typing it into the fields on a candidate's profile”. The risk is a busy recruiter who doesn't, or a search that never finds you.
- It doesn't give you a score to beat. No vendor page we read shows candidates a score or publishes a pass mark; the percentages come from CV-checking sites, each on its own scale.
“You'll find many of these online, but they all make their own grading up.”
What it does automatically is what the employer sets it to do: act on your answers to the application questions, and filter on stated requirements such as a degree, a licence or a certification (the Harvard report (opens in a new window)).
Which systems Dubai employers use
Greenhouse is the most common among the Dubai tech employers we track, with 10 of the 40 whose system we found. The list leans towards scale-ups, whose job boards are public. The employers we track.
| Item | Employers |
|---|---|
| Greenhouse | 10 |
| Ashby | 9 |
| Lever | 7 |
| Teamtailor | 3 |
| Workable | 3 |
| Oracle Recruiting | 2 |
| Other systems | 6 |
The largest local employers run enterprise systems. The careers pages of Emirates NBD (opens in a new window), DP World (opens in a new window) and Emaar (opens in a new window) each lead to an Oracle candidate site, Emirates Group (opens in a new window)'s leads to Avature and flydubai (opens in a new window)'s to iCIMS (the pages' own links, read on 10 October 2026).
We found no public upload rules for candidates from Workday or Bayt, so we state none for them. Where a vendor leaves the limits to the employer, the upload box on the careers page is the rule. These systems differ in detail and trip over the same things, so one plain file serves all of them.
Sources
Each step above links to its own sources in the CV format guide. The rest of this guide comes from:
- Emirates Group Careers (opens in a new window), Emirates Group, 10 October 2026
- flydubai careers (opens in a new window), flydubai, 10 October 2026
- New job search service helps job seekers penetrate applicant tracking systems (opens in a new window), CIO, 29 February 2012
- DP World careers (opens in a new window), DP World, 10 October 2026
- Hidden workers: untapped talent (report, September 2021) (opens in a new window), Harvard Business School and Accenture, 10 October 2026
- Write an ATS-friendly CV: 6 tips to reach recruiters (opens in a new window), LHH (Adecco Group), 12 November 2025
- Working with resume parsing (SuccessFactors Recruiting) (opens in a new window), SAP Help Portal, 10 October 2026
- CV format for UAE jobs: the complete 2026 guide (opens in a new window), Bayt.com, 1 June 2026
- Emirates NBD careers (opens in a new window), Emirates NBD, 10 October 2026
- Emaar careers (opens in a new window), Emaar, 10 October 2026
- Understanding resume parsing (opens in a new window), Lever Help Center, 28 September 2026
- FAQs: creating, uploading and managing a CV file (opens in a new window), Indeed, 10 October 2026
- Save or convert to PDF or XPS in Office desktop apps (opens in a new window), Microsoft Support, 10 October 2026
- Using Recruiting: candidate management (Oracle Talent Acquisition Cloud, release 19C) (opens in a new window), Oracle, 10 October 2026
- What is an applicant tracking system? (opens in a new window), Workday, 10 October 2026
- How to keep your resume from getting lost in cyberspace (opens in a new window), Fortune, 22 August 2014
- 2026 applicant tracking system (ATS) usage report (opens in a new window), Jobscan, 20 August 2026
- Tips for creating electronics resumes (opens in a new window), RChilli, 10 October 2026
- Bayt: creating a profile (digital toolkit, 5.1.2) (opens in a new window), University of Warwick, Institute for Employment Research, 30 July 2026
- Unsuccessful resume parse (opens in a new window), Greenhouse Support, 2 March 2026
- Application rules overview (opens in a new window), Greenhouse Support, 2 March 2026
- Concept: resume parsing (Workday Administrator Guide) (opens in a new window), Workday, 23 June 2023
- Improving extraction from column resumes (opens in a new window), Textkernel, 10 October 2026
- Auto-disqualify candidates using application form questions (opens in a new window), Workable Help, 10 October 2026
This is guidance, not legal or tax advice. Rules change; check the official source and your employer before you act.