How to make an ATS-friendly resume

What an applicant tracking system is

An ATS is the database behind a company’s job postings. When you apply through a careers page, a job board or a recruiter’s link, the system stores your file, extracts (“parses”) the text into fields such as name, employers, job titles, dates, education and skills, and lets recruiters search and filter candidates. Many larger companies in the Philippines, including BPO firms, banks and multinationals, use one. Many small businesses do not and simply read the file.

Parsing quality varies by vendor and by how each employer sets it up. The same resume can parse perfectly in one system and lose a section in another. That is why this guide is about reducing risk, not about passing a test.

How employers actually use it

• Searching and filtering. Recruiters search the parsed text for titles, tools and locations. If your skills are only in a graphic, they are invisible.
• Knockout questions. Application forms often ask about eligibility, shifts or licences. These matter more than keyword counts.
• Ranking or matching. Some systems score similarity to the job description. Others do nothing of the kind. You rarely know which, so write for the human who reads next.

Formatting that parses cleanly

• Use a single column for the main content, or keep a sidebar to contact details and skills only. Parsers read left to right, top to bottom; two full columns can interleave lines.
• Use standard section headings: Summary, Experience, Education, Skills, Certifications. Creative labels such as “My journey” may not be recognised.
• Keep each job as: title, employer, location, dates (month and year), then bullet points. Put dates in one consistent format.
• Avoid tables for layout, text boxes, and text inside images or icons. Decorative lines and colour are fine when the text is real text.
• Spell out acronyms once (“Business Process Outsourcing (BPO)”) so both forms are searchable.
• Export as PDF unless the posting asks for Word. Make sure the PDF has selectable text: if you can highlight a word, a parser can read it.

Photos, columns and graphics

Photos are customary on a Philippine biodata and some local employers expect one. For applications to multinationals, online job boards or any system that discourages photos, leave it out. Charts of “skill levels”, rating bars and icon-only contact details are the most common parsing problems because they contain no text. If you love a design that uses them, keep a plain version for online applications.

Keywords should reflect real qualifications

Mirror the posting’s language where it is true of you: if the job says “customer retention” and you did that work, say “customer retention”, not a synonym. Do not add skills you cannot discuss in an interview and never hide keywords in white text. Recruiters see parsed text, and an interview will expose the gap.

What bIODATA does and does not do

• Templates marked ATS-friendly in the gallery (Editorial Serif, Swiss and Timeline) use one main column, standard headings and plain text. The other designs are built for readers and may use sidebars or tiles.
• Every PDF and Word export contains real, selectable text with embedded fonts. Nothing is rasterised.
• The AI review includes an “ATS readability” check that looks at headings, structure, dates and wording. It is an editorial check by a language model, not a simulation of any employer’s system.
• The editor’s completeness checklist (a percentage) only counts which core sections are filled in. It is not an ATS score and does not predict how any employer will rank you.

We do not publish an “ATS compatibility score” and have not run independent tests against specific vendors’ software. Treat any tool that promises a guaranteed pass with caution.

Frequently asked questions