When you apply for a role online, your CV almost never reaches a person first. It reaches a parser — software that reads your file and converts it into structured fields: name, current employer, job titles, dates, skills. If the parse goes well, a recruiter sees a clean card. If it goes badly, they see a half-empty one, and a half-empty card gets skipped.
If a machine cannot read your CV, a human never will.
What actually breaks the parse
Parsers are literal. They expect a single column of text read top to bottom, with standard headings and no visual tricks. These are the things that reliably break them:
- Two-column layouts. The parser reads across both columns on the same line, so your job title ends up welded to your degree.
- Tables used for alignment. Borders and cells get flattened or dropped entirely, taking your dates with them.
- Text boxes and shapes. Anything inside a floating box is frequently ignored — a common way to lose a phone number.
- Headers and footers. Many parsers skip them, which is exactly where people put their contact details.
- Images of text. A graphic with your name on it is just a picture. There is nothing to read.
The structure that always works
Boring beats clever. Use one column, top to bottom, with these headings in this order:
- Contact — name, phone, email, city. In the body, not the header.
- Summary — two or three lines stating what you do and how long you have done it.
- Experience — company, title, dates (month and year), then bullet points.
- Education — degree, institution, year.
- Skills — plain, comma-separated, spelled the way the job ad spells them.
Dates matter more than you think
Write dates as June 2022 – Present, not 06/22 –. A missing or malformed end date is one of the most common reasons a candidate gets filtered out of a shortlist query — the recruiter's search for "people currently employed" simply will not return you.
Save it as the right file
Send a .docx or a text-based .pdf. A scanned PDF is an image, and it parses as an empty document. If you can select the text in your PDF, the parser can read it too.
Write for the two-minute read
Once a human does open your CV, assume two minutes at most. Put your strongest, most relevant line first under each role — not the one from four years ago that you are proudest of. Use numbers where you have them: portfolio size, revenue handled, tickets closed, team size.
And check it against the job description before you send. If the ad says "MIS reporting" and you wrote "management dashboards", you are relying on the recruiter to connect the two. Most will not.
The short version
One column. Standard headings. Real dates. Text, not images. Save as a readable PDF or Word file. It is not glamorous, but it is the version that reaches a person — and that is the entire point.