The anatomy of an ATS-friendly resume

Most resumes are read by software before they're read by a person. Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) — Greenhouse, Lever, Workday, Ashby, and dozens of others — tokenize your resume, score it against the role, and route it to a recruiter only if the score is high enough.

What ATS systems actually do - Parse text out of PDF/DOCX into structured fields (name, contact, experience, education). - Score how well your keywords match the job description. - Flag your application for recruiter review only above a threshold.

Crucially, ATS parsers fail in ways you don't expect. A two-column resume? Half your content might be lost. A skill listed as an icon? Invisible. A bullet using a fancy unicode glyph? Sometimes dropped.

What to do 1. Use simple one-column layouts. 2. Save as a real PDF (not an image-of-text PDF) or DOCX. 3. Match the JD's vocabulary precisely — if the role says "TypeScript," don't write "TS." 4. Include a "Skills" section near the top with comma-separated terms. 5. Use standard headings: Experience, Education, Skills, Summary.

What Projobly does We don't pretend ATS optimization is magic. We just feed the JD and your real experience to Claude, and ask it to surface (not invent) the matching language. The output is one-column, plain-text-friendly, and uses the JD's actual vocabulary. We don't stuff keywords — we re-emphasize the parts of your background that already match.

That's the entire trick: tell the truth, in the words the screener is looking for.