The format that works
One column, top to bottom, in this order:
- Name and contact details in the body of the document — never in a header or footer.
- A short professional summary.
- Work experience in reverse chronological order, with full four-digit years.
- Education.
- A plainly headed Skills section.
That is it. Every parser in common use handles this correctly.
What breaks it
Sidebars are the most common failure. A left-hand column of skills and a right-hand column of experience looks organised to you and reads as interleaved nonsense to a parser that goes line by line across the page.
Tables are the second. Even invisible ones used purely for alignment are frequently skipped, taking their contents with them.
Then: text boxes, images containing text, unusual fonts that do not embed, and section headings the parser does not recognise.
File format
PDF is fine and is what most systems prefer, as long as it is a real text PDF rather than a scan or an exported image. If a posting specifically asks for Word, send Word — that request usually means their system handles it better.
Never send a resume as a JPEG or a scanned document. There is no text in it to extract.
Design is not the enemy
ATS-safe does not mean ugly. Typography, spacing, colour, and hierarchy all survive parsing perfectly well — it is the layout structure that matters, not the aesthetics.
Every NavPeer template is single-column and free of text boxes and tables, including the designed ones.