Resume Builder
4 templates including ATS-friendly · 14 accent colors · optional headshot photo · all sections · live preview · PDF or ATS-safe text download · auto-saves in your browser
How to use it
Fill in the form. The right panel shows exactly how the page will print.
Switch between the 4 templates at the top to compare layouts before committing. Pick an accent from the 14 swatches or the colour wheel next to them, and add a headshot in Personal Info if your template supports one. Everything auto-saves to your browser every few seconds.
When it looks right, choose your download. Download PDF opens your browser’s print dialog, where “Save as PDF” gives you a polished file to send to a person. ATS-Safe Text skips the layout entirely and gives you a plain .txt file in a fixed order.
Which of those you want depends entirely on whether a human or a parser reads it first.
What actually breaks ATS parsing
Applicant tracking systems do not look at your resume. They convert it to plain text first, then read that. Anything that survives the conversion badly is invisible, however good it looks on screen.
Workday, Taleo, Greenhouse, iCIMS and Lever all handle this conversion slightly differently, which is why a file that parses cleanly for one employer comes out mangled for the next. You never get told which system you are up against, so the safe move is a layout that survives all of them.
Contact details in a header or footer are the worst offender. In both Word files and PDFs, headers and footers live in a separate layer from the body text, and most parsers extract the body only. Your name, phone number and email can vanish completely. You become a qualified candidate with no way to be reached, the application quietly dies, and nobody on either side ever learns why. It is the single most expensive formatting mistake on this list, because every other parsing failure costs you some detail while this one costs you the entire application. Keep contact details in the body of the page, at the top, as ordinary text.
Two columns get scrambled. A parser reads left to right, top to bottom, so a two-column layout comes out interleaved: first row left cell, first row right cell, second row left cell, and so on. A job title in one column beside a skills list in the other emerges as “Software Engineer Python JavaScript”, one meaningless run of words.
Tables get skipped. Workday in particular struggles with table content, including the simple two-column table people reach for in a skills section.
The information sits right there in your document and is simply absent from the parsed version.
Skills rendered as graphics count for nothing. Those five-star proficiency bars contain zero characters. A parser sees an image and moves straight past it, so “expert in Python” registers as nothing at all.
Two more worth avoiding. Unusual fonts, which can map to the wrong characters when text is extracted. And PDFs exported from design tools such as Illustrator or Canva, which sometimes encode letters in a way that reads back as gibberish.
Which template to choose
Professional suits most industries: finance, law, consulting, healthcare, education. Clean two-column layout, easy for a person to skim.
Modern fits technology, product and startup roles. Single column, indigo accent, contemporary without being loud.
ATS-Minimal is the one for online portals. Single column, no graphics, standard section headings that parsers recognise.
Creative belongs in design, marketing and media, where standing out visually helps rather than hurts.
Rule of thumb. Uploading to a portal? ATS-Minimal or the plain text download. Emailing a named human? Any of the other three.
On length, 1 page is standard under about 10 years of experience and 2 pages is normal beyond that. Three pages needs a reason, and an academic CV is a different document with different rules.
PDF or plain text
Send the PDF when a person opens it directly. A recruiter you have spoken to. A hiring manager. Anyone at the other end of an email you wrote yourself.
Use the ATS-Safe Text file when a system reads it first, or when a form asks you to paste. It flattens everything into a single column in a fixed order: contact details, summary, experience, education, skills, then any optional sections you filled in. Nothing left for a parser to trip over.
Plenty of applications want both. Portals routinely take an upload, run it through a parser, then show the original to a human two weeks later. Attaching the PDF and pasting the plain text covers both readers without you having to guess which one matters.
Frequently asked questions
Which template is best for getting past ATS systems?
ATS-Minimal. Single column, no tables, no graphics, black text on white, and standard headings parsers recognise. Avoid Creative and any two-column layout for portal applications.
Should I download the PDF or the ATS-Safe Text file?
PDF when a person reads it directly. Plain text when a system does. If the application involves both, use both.
Why would my contact details go missing?
Because they were in a header or footer, which sits in a separate document layer that most parsers never read. Keep your name and contact details in the body of the page.
Do two-column resumes really fail?
Often, yes. Parsers read across before they read down, so the two columns interleave and produce nonsense. It looks fine to you and unreadable to the software.
Is my resume data saved?
It saves to your browser’s local storage, so it is there when you come back on the same device and browser.
How do I download my resume as a PDF?
Click Download PDF, then choose “Save as PDF” in Chrome or Edge, or “Print to PDF” in Firefox.
Related: check your word count · turn a cover letter into a PDF · merge resume and cover letter.