The guide
How an ATS reads your resume, and where it goes wrong
An applicant tracking system is the software employers use to receive and sort applications. Workday, Taleo, Greenhouse, Lever and iCIMS are some of the most common. When your file arrives, the ATS converts it to plain text and tries to sort each piece into a field: contact details, job title, employer, dates, degrees, skills. Recruiters then work from that parsed profile, usually by searching it for keywords.
That parsing step is where a lot of resumes lose information. Two-column layouts can scramble the reading order. Text inside images, text boxes or the page header is sometimes skipped. Skill bars and star ratings mean nothing to a parser. A scanned PDF is just a picture with no text to read. Creative section names like "My Journey" make things harder too; "Work Experience", "Education" and "Skills" remain the safest choice.
Keywords: what the job description is really asking for
Once your resume is parsed, recruiters often filter or rank candidates by keyword. Exact wording matters. If the posting says "accounts payable" and you only wrote "invoice processing", a search may not surface you. Mirror the job description's language wherever it accurately describes your work, and spell out acronyms at least once (SEO and search engine optimization, CRM and customer relationship management).
Put keywords inside your experience bullets, not only in a skills list. "Managed a $200K paid social budget in HubSpot" carries more weight than a lone word. Skip keyword stuffing: repeating a term ten times or hiding it in white text will not fool the person who reads your resume afterwards.
Keep in mind there is no universal "ATS score". Every system ranks differently, and a person always makes the call. MIA CV's score is a benchmark for comparing your resume with a given job, not a promise of an interview.
US and UK resume conventions
In the US and the UK, leave off the photo, date of birth and marital status; many employers prefer not to see them at all. A US resume is usually one page early in your career and two at most later on. In the UK the document is often called a CV and two pages is standard. Lead with a headline that matches the target title, use month and year for dates, and send a text-based PDF unless the posting asks for a Word file.