ATS-friendly resume template: what makes a layout parse cleanly, with an example

Example resume

Example

Marcus Whitfield

Supply Chain Analyst, inventory planning and SAP

marcus.whitfield@example.com · (704) 555-0132 · Charlotte, NC

Summary

Supply chain analyst with 6 years in distribution and manufacturing. Inventory planning, demand forecasting and supplier performance reporting in SAP and Excel. Looking for a senior analyst role in a regional distribution network.

Experience

Supply Chain Analyst

Apr 2022 - Present

Piedmont Home Goods Distribution · Charlotte, NC · Full-time

• Plan inventory for 4,200 SKUs across 3 distribution centers in SAP S/4HANA.
• Built a weekly demand forecast in Excel and Power BI that cut stockouts by 18% in 12 months.
• Track on-time delivery for 35 suppliers and lead the monthly supplier review.
• Reduced excess inventory by $1.2M by flagging slow-moving items each quarter.

Inventory Control Specialist

Jun 2019 - Mar 2022

Carolina Fastener Supply · Gastonia, NC · Full-time

• Ran cycle counts and reconciled variances for a 90,000 sq ft warehouse.
• Raised inventory accuracy from 94% to 99.1% in 18 months.
• Trained 8 warehouse associates on receiving and put-away procedures.

Education

B.S. in Supply Chain Management

Aug 2015 - May 2019

University of North Carolina at Charlotte · Charlotte, NC

Certified in Planning and Inventory Management (CPIM)

Jan 2023 - Oct 2023

ASCM · Online

Skills

• Inventory planning
• Demand forecasting
• SAP S/4HANA (MM, SD)
• Excel: pivot tables, XLOOKUP, Power Query
• Power BI
• Supplier performance management

Languages

• English native speaker

Interests

Youth soccer coach · Trail running

Marcus applies to large distributors and manufacturers, where every application goes through Workday, iCIMS or another applicant tracking system before a recruiter sees it. His resume uses the Cobalt template: a color block behind the header, then one column from top to bottom. The color is a background, so his name, phone and email stay text that a parser can pull out.

What makes this ATS-friendly resume template work, and what you can copy:

• the job title sits right under the name, in the words the postings use: "Supply Chain Analyst";
• headings are the standard ones (Summary, Experience, Education, Skills), so the ATS files each block in the right field;
• every role has a start and end month, which lets filters like "5+ years of experience" count it;
• tools are spelled out (SAP S/4HANA, Power BI, XLOOKUP) instead of shown as logos or rating dots;
• the certification is written in full with its acronym, because recruiters search both.

An applicant tracking system (ATS) is the software that receives your application on a company career site. It opens your file, extracts the text, and sorts it into fields: name, contact details, job titles, employers, dates, skills, education. Recruiters then search and filter those fields. The ATS rarely rejects a resume on its own; a resume that parses badly simply comes out incomplete, and an incomplete profile doesn't show up in searches.

An ATS-friendly resume template is one whose layout survives that extraction. In practice:

• One column for the story: work history and education read top to bottom, in the same order as on screen.
• Standard headings: "Experience", "Education", "Skills". A parser knows where to file them; "My Journey" leaves it guessing.
• Real text everywhere: no name or phone inside an image, no text boxes, no tables used to place blocks side by side.
• Contact details in the body, not only in the page header or footer, which some systems skip.
• Words, not graphics: "Advanced Excel" rather than four filled dots out of five.
• A readable size: body text between 10 and 12 points, with normal margins.

Kandiq has 29 resume templates in five families. 21 of them carry no caveat for automated reading, and each card in the gallery says so with a shield icon. The others are marked with a warning and the reason, written in plain words on the card: you don't have to guess.

If you don't know where your resume will land, start with Ink, the default: one column, all-caps headings underlined with a rule. Firm gives the centered, serif look expected in finance, consulting and law. Dense fits ten years of experience on one page without going below 10 points. The simple resume template page compares the plainest ones in detail.

Four of these ATS-friendly templates (Coral, Onyx, Clay and Sage) show a photo by default. A US resume shouldn't have one: switch "Show photo" off in the design panel and the rest of the layout stays the same.

Most parsing problems come from design choices that look great in a PDF viewer. Watch for these when you pick an ATS resume template, whatever tool it comes from:

• A sidebar or second column holding skills, contact details or dates: older parsers read the page line by line and can interleave the two columns.
• Skill bars, stars or pie charts with no word next to them: the software sees shapes, not "advanced".
• Icons instead of labels for phone, email or LinkedIn, especially when the detail itself is part of the icon.
• Text boxes and tables used to place blocks on the page: cells and boxes can come out in the wrong order, or not at all.
• A headshot in the header: it's an image next to your name, and US employers don't expect one.
• Unusual fonts embedded as outlines, or a scanned resume: there's no text left to extract.

A two-column template isn't forbidden. It's a fine choice when you hand your resume to a person, email it to a hiring manager, or bring it to a career fair. For online applications, keep a one-column version. In Kandiq, switching templates keeps all your content, so you can have both in a minute.

An ATS expects the usual sections, in the usual order. Kandiq's templates print these headings as is:

1. Header: full name, the job title you're targeting, city and state, phone, email, LinkedIn URL. No full street address, no date of birth.
2. Summary: two or three sentences with your title, years of experience and strongest skills. See our resume summary examples.
3. Experience: reverse-chronological, with job title, employer, city and state, start and end month, then three to five bullets that each show a result.
4. Education: degree, school, city, graduation year. Certifications can go here or in their own section.
5. Skills: hard skills named the way postings name them, plus a few soft skills you can prove. Our guide to skills for your resume has lists by field.
6. Optional: Certifications, Technical Skills, Languages, Interests, each under its standard name.

Keep the reverse-chronological format unless you have a strong reason not to. A purely functional resume, which groups skills and hides dates, is the format parsers handle worst, and recruiters tend to distrust it.

• Font: a common sans serif or serif, 10 to 12 points for body text. Kandiq's templates set body text between 10 and 10.8 points, and the text size stays adjustable.
• Dates: one format everywhere, month and year ("Apr 2022 to Present" or "04/2022"). A role with only years can be miscounted.
• Bullets: plain round bullets. Arrows, check marks and emoji can come out as blank boxes.
• Length: one page early in your career, two at most after that. "Auto-fit" in Kandiq tightens spacing to hit a page count without dropping below a readable size.
• File: a PDF exported from your editor, with real, selectable text, unless the posting asks for Word. A scanned PDF is an image.

Kandiq downloads your resume as a PDF identical to the preview, with real text in the same reading order, or as a Word (.docx) file in a simple one-column layout that any recruiter or staffing agency can edit. Both downloads are part of the subscription; you see your finished resume in full before paying anything.

In the United States, a resume has no photo, no date of birth and no marital status. The EEOC says employers should not ask for a photograph of an applicant, since it can reveal traits that hiring decisions must not rest on; if one is needed for identification, it comes after the offer. Many employers set aside resumes with a photo, and an image next to your name is one more thing a parser can stumble on.

Kandiq's ATS check flags a photo on any resume written in American English. Your face belongs on your LinkedIn profile instead, which recruiters open right after your resume.

The template makes sure the ATS can read you. Whether a recruiter finds you depends on the words: recruiters search the database with the terms from their own job posting. A resume that says "stock management" when the posting says "inventory planning" parses perfectly and still doesn't come up.

Before you apply, run your file through our ATS checker: 12 checks, a score out of 100, and the terms of the posting your resume is missing. Kandiq can also tailor your resume to a posting with AI and show you each change before you keep it; tailoring uses 5 AI credits, and a new account starts with 5.

1. Pick a template with the shield icon in the resume templates gallery: your choice carries over to the editor.
2. Start from scratch or import your current resume from a PDF or Word file, or from your LinkedIn profile's PDF export. Anything the import couldn't place is shown to you.
3. Paste the job posting and work its terms into your summary, bullets and skills, where they're true.
4. Check the preview, run "Auto-fit" if you're a few lines over a page, and keep "Show photo" off.
5. Run the ATS check, fix what it flags, then download your PDF.

No work history yet? Our resume with no work experience shows the same sections filled with volunteering, coursework and projects.