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ATS-friendly resume template

Two free single-column templates that applicant tracking systems read in the order you see, one honest warning about our third, and the format rules behind all of it.

Updated · Resume Generator

What makes a template ATS-friendly

One column, standard headings (Summary, Experience, Education, Skills), contact details as plain text, a common font, and no tables, text boxes or graphics. Saved as a text PDF. Everything else is decoration.

Templates

Two ATS-friendly templates, same resume

Below is one fictional sample resume shown in both single-column templates. The content is identical, so you can compare the look alone. In both, a typical ATS reads the sections in this order: Summary → Experience → Education → Skills → Certifications → Languages. The sample scores 100/100 on our 19-check ATS rubric in either template, because the score measures content, not design.

Modern

ATS-friendly

Single column. Typical ATS software reads sections in the same order you see.

Kavya Iyer

Data Analyst

kavya.iyer@example.com · +91 99876 54321 · Hyderabad, Telangana · linkedin.com/in/kavya-iyer

Summary

Data analyst with three years of experience in retail and fintech, turning SQL and Python analysis into dashboards that sales and product teams use every week. Strongest in experiment analysis, cohort retention and stakeholder reporting.

Experience

Data Analyst · Northstar PaymentsMar 2024 — Present
  • Built a Power BI retention dashboard used by 4 product teams, replacing 12 manual weekly reports.
  • Analysed 18 checkout A/B tests, recommending two changes that lifted payment success by 3.1%.
  • Automated merchant churn scoring in Python, flagging 240 at-risk accounts a month for the sales team.
Junior Data Analyst · Greenleaf RetailJul 2022 — Feb 2024
  • Wrote SQL pipelines for daily sales data across 85 stores, cutting report preparation from 3 hours to 20 minutes.
  • Designed a stock-out alert in Excel and SQL that reduced lost sales in pilot stores by 7%.

Education

B.Sc, Statistics — Riverside College of Science, Chennai2019 — 2022

Skills

SQL · Python (pandas) · Power BI · Excel · A/B testing · Cohort analysis · Statistics · Stakeholder reporting

Certifications

Google Data Analytics Professional Certificate — Coursera2023

Languages

English (Fluent) · Tamil (Native) · Telugu (Conversational)

Classic

ATS-friendly

Single column serif. Typical ATS software reads sections in the same order you see.

Kavya Iyer

Data Analyst

kavya.iyer@example.com · +91 99876 54321 · Hyderabad, Telangana · linkedin.com/in/kavya-iyer

Profile

Data analyst with three years of experience in retail and fintech, turning SQL and Python analysis into dashboards that sales and product teams use every week. Strongest in experiment analysis, cohort retention and stakeholder reporting.

Experience

Data Analyst
Northstar Payments · Mar 2024 — Present
  • Built a Power BI retention dashboard used by 4 product teams, replacing 12 manual weekly reports.
  • Analysed 18 checkout A/B tests, recommending two changes that lifted payment success by 3.1%.
  • Automated merchant churn scoring in Python, flagging 240 at-risk accounts a month for the sales team.
Junior Data Analyst
Greenleaf Retail · Jul 2022 — Feb 2024
  • Wrote SQL pipelines for daily sales data across 85 stores, cutting report preparation from 3 hours to 20 minutes.
  • Designed a stock-out alert in Excel and SQL that reduced lost sales in pilot stores by 7%.

Education

B.Sc, Statistics, Riverside College of Science, Chennai (2019 — 2022)

Skills

SQL, Python (pandas), Power BI, Excel, A/B testing, Cohort analysis, Statistics, Stakeholder reporting

Certifications

Google Data Analytics Professional Certificate — Coursera(2023)

Languages

English (Fluent), Tamil (Native), Telugu (Conversational)

Use these templates free Check my current resume

Pick Modern or Classic in the builder's settings. You can switch any time without retyping.

The honest warning

Our third template is not ATS-friendly

Our Creative template has two columns: a sidebar for skills, education and languages, and a main column for summary and experience. It looks better. It also parses worse.

Many parsers read one column completely before the other. For this same sample, a typical ATS is likely to read: Skills → Education → Certifications → Languages → Summary → Experience. Your summary and experience, the parts a recruiter cares about most, arrive last, and your skills may be filed before any role they belong to.

We keep Creative for applications that go straight to a person, such as a referral or a printed copy at an interview. The app labels it "Two-column" and shows this warning every time you pick it.

Using a two-column template from anywhere? Upload the PDF to the free ATS checker and read the extracted text to see the order your sections actually come out in.

Creative

Two columns

About

Data analyst with three years of experience in retail and fintech, turning SQL and Python analysis into dashboards that sales and product teams use every week. Strongest in experiment analysis, cohort retention and stakeholder reporting.

Experience

Data AnalystMar 2024 — Present
Northstar Payments
  • Built a Power BI retention dashboard used by 4 product teams, replacing 12 manual weekly reports.
  • Analysed 18 checkout A/B tests, recommending two changes that lifted payment success by 3.1%.
  • Automated merchant churn scoring in Python, flagging 240 at-risk accounts a month for the sales team.
Junior Data AnalystJul 2022 — Feb 2024
Greenleaf Retail
  • Wrote SQL pipelines for daily sales data across 85 stores, cutting report preparation from 3 hours to 20 minutes.
  • Designed a stock-out alert in Excel and SQL that reduced lost sales in pilot stores by 7%.

Format rules

ATS-friendly resume format: 8 rules

The template gets you most of the way. These rules cover the rest, whichever builder or word processor you use.

  1. 01

    One column

    A parser reads text in the order the file stores it. In a single column, that matches what you see.

  2. 02

    Standard section headings

    Use Summary, Experience, Education, Skills, Projects, Certifications. An ATS maps known headings to fields; "My Journey" maps to nothing.

  3. 03

    Contact details as plain text

    Email, phone and city written out at the top, not inside icons, images, headers or footers.

  4. 04

    No tables, text boxes or graphics

    They are often read out of order or skipped. Skill bars and charts carry no text an ATS can use.

  5. 05

    A common font

    Inter, Calibri, Arial, Georgia or similar at 10–12pt. Decorative fonts can come out as garbled characters.

  6. 06

    Consistent dates

    One format throughout, e.g. "Mar 2024 — Present", next to every role.

  7. 07

    Keywords from the job posting

    ATS search is literal. Use the posting's exact names for skills and tools, where they are true for you.

  8. 08

    A text PDF

    Export from your editor. A scan or photo has no text at all. If you cannot select the text in a PDF viewer, neither can an ATS.

Avoid

  • Photos, logos and icons
  • Skill bars and star ratings
  • Tables and text boxes
  • Contact details in the page header or footer
  • Creative headings like "What I bring"

Use

  • One column, top to bottom
  • Bullets that start with a verb
  • Numbers you can explain in an interview
  • Skills named as in the job posting
  • A PDF you can select text in

Writing your first resume? See the resume format for freshers, with two scored samples and career objective examples.

ATS-friendly resume FAQ

ATS-Friendly Resume Template & Format (Free, 2026) | Resume Generator