Most rejected resumes do not get rejected because the candidate was unqualified. They get rejected because the ATS could not read them properly. Tables, columns, custom fonts, decorative section headers — these are the things that turn a strong resume into a parsed-out mess of unstructured text that scores 30/100 before anyone even looks at it.
This is the formatting playbook. Seven rules, three real before/after examples, and a list of the mistakes that cause instant rejections. Everything here works with Workday, Taleo, Greenhouse, Lever, and the other parsers that 99% of large employers use.
The seven rules
1. Single column. Always.
Two-column resumes look polished in Canva and break in Workday. The ATS reads top to bottom, left to right. When it hits a column, it either skips the second column entirely or reads the whole thing top to bottom from left, then top to bottom from right — which scrambles your section order.
The fix is simple: one column from top to bottom. Your name and contact info at the top, then sections stacked vertically. That is it.
If you absolutely need to save horizontal space, use a slightly smaller font (10pt minimum) and slightly tighter margins (0.6" minimum). Do not switch to columns.
2. No tables, no text boxes
This is the formatting choice most often confused for "looking professional." Tables and text boxes are how design tools structure visual layouts. ATS parsers strip them out — either dropping the content entirely or flattening it into a wall of text where the relationships between rows and columns are lost.
If your skills section is currently in a 2-column table, replace it with a single line: "Skills: Python, SQL, Tableau, AWS." That parses cleanly. The table does not.
3. Use standard fonts
Arial. Helvetica. Calibri. Times New Roman. Georgia. Pick one. Stay with it.
Custom or downloaded fonts have two failure modes: the PDF embeds the font and the ATS cannot decode it (the resume becomes unreadable squares), or the font does not embed and the ATS substitutes a default — which sometimes corrupts spacing enough to mash words together. Either failure tanks your parsing.
Body text at 10–11pt. Section headers at 12–14pt. Name at 18–22pt. Skip the underlining — bold is enough.
4. Real section headings
Use the standard ones. "Work Experience" or "Professional Experience." "Education." "Skills." "Projects." "Certifications."
Do not use "My Journey," "Where I've Been," "Things I'm Good At," or any other creative variation. The ATS is scanning for the standard labels to know which section it is in. Custom labels confuse the parser, which means your experience gets categorized incorrectly — or not at all.
If you want to add personality, do it in the bullet writing. Not in the section labels.
5. Consistent date format throughout
The ATS uses dates to calculate years of experience. If one role says "Jan 2020 – Dec 2022" and another says "January '23 to Present" and a third says "2024", the parser may fail to extract any of them correctly. Years of experience defaults to zero. The resume gets filtered out.
Pick one format. Use it everywhere. The cleanest one is "Month YYYY – Month YYYY," like "Jan 2020 – Dec 2022." For current roles use "Month YYYY – Present."
6. Bullet points start with action verbs
This is style advice, not parsing advice — but it affects the score. ATS systems trained on what good resumes look like reward bullets that lead with strong verbs. "Built", "Led", "Reduced", "Shipped", "Owned", "Increased."
Avoid weak openers: "Responsible for," "Tasked with," "Helped with." These tell the ATS this candidate was a passenger, not a driver.
7. Save as PDF (text-based, not scanned)
Always export as PDF. Always make sure the PDF is text-based, not a scanned image. A scanned PDF is just a picture of a resume — the ATS cannot read it.
The way to verify: open your PDF, try to select the text. If you can highlight individual words, it is text-based. If you can only select the whole page as an image, it is scanned and the ATS sees nothing.
Three before/after examples
Example 1: Skills section
Before (table format):
A 2-column, 4-row table with "Languages | Python, SQL" on one row, "Tools | Tableau, Excel" on another, etc.
When parsed: "Languages Python SQL Tools Tableau Excel Cloud AWS GCP Methods Agile Scrum" — one mashed string. The ATS cannot tell which item is a header and which is a skill, so it indexes everything as plain text with no structure.
After (single line):
Skills: Python, SQL, Tableau, Excel, AWS, GCP, Agile, Scrum.
When parsed: clean comma-separated list. Every skill is searchable individually.
Example 2: Work experience header
Before (decorative):
A custom-fonted header that says "💼 Senior Software Engineer @ TechCorp · Bengaluru · 01.2023 — Present"
When parsed: emojis dropped, dates in "01.2023" format unrecognized, the "@" symbol confuses the parser about where the company name starts. Years of experience: indeterminate.
After (standard):
Senior Software Engineer
TechCorp | Bengaluru | Jan 2023 – Present
When parsed: title on its own line, company and location separated by pipe, dates in recognizable format. Years of experience: correctly computed.
Example 3: Bullet points
Before:
- Responsible for managing a team and delivering projects on time
After:
- Led a team of 6 engineers across 3 quarters to ship 4 product launches with zero rollbacks
The second version is the same length but gives the ATS — and the human reader — specific signals: team size (leadership), timeframe (delivery cadence), number of outputs (productivity), quality (zero rollbacks). It scores higher and reads better.
Mistakes that cause instant rejections
A short list of formatting choices the average ATS will punish disproportionately:
- Photos. US and most European ATS systems flag photos as PII risk and may auto-reject. In India some systems are more tolerant, but the safer call is no photo on the resume.
- Headers and footers. Most parsers ignore content in PDF headers and footers. If your contact info is there, it disappears.
- Graphics, charts, icons. Stripped out. If they encoded important information, it is gone.
- PDFs created with Canva, Figma, or other design tools using complex layouts. These often parse as a single text blob with no structure.
- Resume from a website export (LinkedIn "Save to PDF", Indeed export). These usually parse fine, but verify by opening the PDF and copying the text — if it reads cleanly, ship it.
Templates and the easier path
If you want to skip the formatting work, we have 5 free ATS-friendly templates that already follow these rules. They're tested against the major parsers and you can download them as PDF samples or build directly in Resuma.
For more on what specifically breaks ATS parsing beyond formatting, see the most common resume formatting mistakes and the full ATS optimization playbook.
If you have already got a resume and you want to know its actual score, run it through the free ATS checker — it will catch every formatting issue and tell you exactly how each one is affecting the score.