How to make your CV readable by applicant tracking systems

More Kenyan employers, especially banks, multinationals, NGOs and large recruiters, now receive applications through an applicant tracking system (ATS). The software stores your CV, pulls out details such as job titles and skills, and helps recruiters search and filter candidates. If it cannot read your CV properly, a recruiter searching for "procurement" may never see you.

What an ATS actually does

An ATS is not a robot that rejects people on its own. It is closer to a search engine for applications. Recruiters set filters or search terms and then read the CVs that come up. So you need two things: a file the software can read cleanly, and the words a recruiter is likely to search for.

Formatting that reads cleanly

• Use a single-column layout. Two-column designs often get read across both columns, mixing lines together.
• Avoid tables, text boxes, icons and graphics for important information. Skill bars and star ratings are invisible to most systems.
• Keep contact details in the main body, not in the page header or footer, which some systems skip.
• Use standard headings such as "Work experience", "Education" and "Skills". Creative headings such as "My journey" confuse parsers.
• Write dates the same way every time, for example "Mar 2023 to Jun 2025".
• Send a text-based PDF or Word file. A scanned CV or a photo saved as PDF cannot be read at all. If you can highlight the text with your mouse, it is text-based.

Words that match the search

Recruiters search for the skills and titles in their own advert. Read it carefully and make sure the important terms appear naturally in your CV, where they are true.

• Use both the full term and the abbreviation the first time: "Customer Relationship Management (CRM)".
• Match standard job titles where honest. If your official title was "Officer II, Revenue" and the work was accounts receivable, you can write "Revenue Officer (Accounts Receivable)".
• Name specific tools and systems: "SAP S/4HANA", "iTax", "IFMIS", "Salesforce", "Tally".

Do not paste the advert in white text or stuff keywords into a block. Recruiters see the stored text, and it looks dishonest.

Test your CV before you send it

Copy all the text from your PDF and paste it into a plain text editor such as Notepad. If the result is jumbled, missing sections or out of order, an ATS will struggle too. Fix the layout and try again.

You can also run your CV against a specific advert with the Monica CV scorer, which shows which important terms from the advert your CV covers and which it misses.

Remember the human reader

Passing the software only gets your CV in front of a person. After that, clear achievements, clean layout and relevant experience do the work. A CV built for both is simple: plain structure, honest keywords and strong evidence.