Today, many people are relying on ChatGPT to achieve a great resume (I don’t criticize it because I know that sometimes it is difficult to talk about ourselves and our achievements), and today, let´s talk about the basis of a winning CV.

 

Does your CV pass the ATS?

ATS is an Applicant Tracking System, which scans your CV to extract all the information written in it and compares it with the description of the vacancy to which you applied and establishes a match (% match between the vacancy and your CV). A minimum of % match is required so that a human can then see your CV and contact you to start a recruitment process.

Here you can read more details about ATS. 

So, what do we have to do for our CV to pass the ATS? 

We have to ensure that the software “reads/scans” our CV correctly and we achieve this by creating a very clean document:

  • Getting rid of images (such as photos, icons, or document background images).
  • Avoid using tables and columns that divide the CV between left and right, as we did before to save space.
  • Eliminating those progress bars that indicated “Javascript 90%”. What is exactly 90% of javascript?
  • Using Google Docs (which is already HTML), that makes the document ATS-friendly.

 

¿What information do we add?

Contact Information: email and cell phone. The full address, identification number and/or passport are not required. Add the country because it is important (the timezone in which you are going to work is important for whoever recruits).

Profile: A summary of your career, your most important achievements (well summarized), how you can add value to a new work experience, and what type of challenges you are looking for.

Skills: A simple list of tools, programming languages, and techniques that you master very well and that are relevant to the job you want to have. And, please, keep it relevant.

Experience: The work experiences you have had, mentioning the name of the company and what they do as a business, the country, start and end dates, what were your main activities, your most important achievements in that position, and the tools/technologies you used.

If you were in several positions or projects in the same company, separate the experiences by each position/project.

If you work for a consulting firm that provides services to another company/client, add a line or two about what the client company does. Later we will see the format in more detail.

Describe your accomplishments objectively: what did you achieve (with figures or metrics)? What did you do that changed the way your team/company worked, the direction of the project, or the achievement of objectives?

Languages: A list of the languages you speak and the level. For example: Spanish (native), and English (advanced).

Education: whether you graduated from university or what study you completed.

Certifications: are not all the courses you took (especially if they are short), focus on certifications that are highly valued. A list of 40 Udemy courses isn’t going to help, especially if they’re from several years ago. 

 

Format to describe our work experience

 

Company Name |  City, Country – Home office from Ecuador |  Starting date – Present

Role/Position

What company does? purpose/business.

My main activities were in <Project> (<what is the project about>):

  • Activity 1.
  • Activity 2.
  • Activity 3.
  • Activity 4.

<Achievements>. Examples: I brought the organization to the team…… I’ve achieved the goal of a 99% first-time acceptance rate…. I designed and developed a complete system to manage a pool of developers…. I designed a mentoring program to level up the skills of all company´s testers.

Technologies: Technology 1, Technology 2, Technology 3.

 

Template

Here you can find a free template, you can make a copy and use it.

 

Is it worth using this super simple format, without colors, without images?

The template is not going to guarantee you a job but it does ensure that you pass the ATS, and if you make a good match, at least one human reads your CV and you enter the recruitment process.