ATS keywords: how to optimise your CV for the screening software

Applicant tracking systems do not score your personality. In most cases they parse your CV into fields — name, employers, job titles, dates, skills — and store it. A recruiter then searches that database for terms, or the system filters by them. Being invisible to that search is the most common way a qualified candidate never gets read.

What the software actually does with your CV

1. It converts the file to text.
2. It tries to identify sections: contact details, experience, education, skills.
3. It stores the words as searchable fields.
4. A recruiter searches, or a rule filters.

Everything that matters follows from step 1. If the text cannot be extracted cleanly, no amount of good experience helps.

The four formatting failures

• Two columns, which scramble the reading order.
• Tables and text boxes, which parsers read in the wrong sequence or skip entirely.
• Contact details in a page header or footer.
• A file that is an image: a scan, a screenshot, or a PDF where the text cannot be selected.

Test it yourself: copy your CV into a plain text editor and read it. If it reads in the right order, a parser will manage.

Where keywords belong

Job titles. Use the market's standard title, then the internal one in brackets if they differ: "Operations Manager (Head of Fulfilment)".

The summary. Two or three of the advert's key requirements, phrased as what you do.

The bullet points. The natural home. "Managed the SAP migration for three sites" contains the keyword and the evidence.

The skills section. Tools, systems, methods, certifications, languages — the specific nouns a recruiter would type.

Matching language without lying

The keyword you need is often a synonym away. If the advert says "stakeholder management" and your CV says "worked with senior people across teams", a search for the first will not find the second — even though you have done the thing.

Go through the advert and highlight every requirement you can honestly claim. Then check that your CV uses that phrasing somewhere. Where it does not, rewrite the bullet or add the term. Where you cannot claim it, leave it out and let the gap be honest.

Why stuffing backfires

A white-text keyword block, a "skills" list of forty terms, or an advert's sentences pasted verbatim into a CV all have the same problem: a human eventually reads it, and the gap between the claims and the evidence is obvious. Modern systems increasingly flag repetition, and recruiters recognise the pattern instantly.

Write for the human, include the words the machine searches for, and never claim something you cannot discuss for two minutes in an interview.

Improving your "ATS score"

Score checkers compare your CV against one advert and output a number. The number is not predictive — it comes from a keyword diff, not from employer data. Use them for the diff, not the grade:

1. Paste the advert, get the missing keyword list.
2. For each missing term, ask: is this true of me?
3. If yes, add it where the evidence is.
4. If no, ignore it.

That is a five-minute job and it is the whole of legitimate ATS optimisation. If you want a second opinion on whether your wording matches the market's, an automated rewrite will rephrase your own content using standard terminology while leaving the facts alone.

The short version

One column. Standard headings. Selectable text. The advert's nouns, in the places evidence already exists. That is ATS optimisation — the rest is a product being sold to you.