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What happens to your CV when you send it

Ubuntu Canarias · 9 min read

Your CV may go through an automated system before it ever reaches a person.

Many companies use ATS (Applicant Tracking Systems) to manage job applications. These tools help sort CVs and identify profiles that meet certain requirements.

That's why content and structure matter. Not at every company — a small business or a family-run one usually reads CVs directly, with no automatic filter — but they do at most mid-sized and large companies' selection processes, which is where a large share of opportunities are decided.

What exactly is an ATS, and why does it exist?

An ATS wasn't designed to rule people out, even though it often feels that way. It was built to solve a very specific problem: when a job posting receives two or three hundred applications, no one in the recruitment team can read all of them with the same level of attention. The system sorts them, filters by objective criteria, and surfaces first the profiles that best match what the posting asked for.

This has a practical consequence: the ATS doesn't judge whether you're a good fit as a person for the role. It judges whether your CV contains, in the right format, the information the recruiter told it to look for. An excellent candidate with a poorly structured CV can rank below someone with less experience but a clearer document. That's not entirely fair, but understanding the mechanics helps you work with the system instead of against it.

What can an ATS look for?

Among other things:

• Job titles and duties
• Years of experience
• Education
• Professional skills
• Languages
• Software and tools
• Certifications
• Words related to the job posting

If the vacancy asks for experience with Excel, SAP, CRM or customer management, those terms should appear in your CV when they're genuinely part of your experience.

Format matters too

A simple CV usually makes both the automated reading and the later human review easier.

Try to use:

• Clearly separated sections
• Identifiable dates and job titles
• Selectable text
• An easy-to-read font
• An orderly structure

Layouts with too many columns, graphics, images or decorative elements can make the document harder for some systems to interpret. This doesn't mean a CV has to be dull. It means the visual side shouldn't get in the way of the information being readable — not for a machine, and not for a person who has thirty seconds to decide whether to keep reading.

Some technical details that get overlooked but do matter:

• File format. Word (.docx) tends to be read better than PDF by some older ATS platforms, although more modern systems now handle both well. If the posting doesn't specify, .docx is the safer choice; if it explicitly asks for PDF, stick with that.
• Nothing important inside headers or footers. Many systems don't read those areas of the document. If your phone number or email only appears there, it's as if it doesn't exist for the ATS.
• Avoid tables for organising the main content. They help the human eye scan visually, but many automated readers extract the text from a table in an order that makes no sense.
• The file name matters more than it seems. "CV_FirstName_LastName.pdf" gets identified and filed better than "document1.pdf" or "CVfinal2.pdf".

When a person reviews it

The recruiter needs to quickly locate the information that's relevant to the position.

Your CV should make it easy to identify:

• What you do professionally
• Where you've worked
• What skills you have
• Which experience relates to the vacancy

A specific headline helps more than a generic description.

❌ "Responsible professional eager to learn."

✅ "Administrative technician specialising in billing and customer management."

How to find the right keywords

You don't need to guess which words an ATS is looking for: they're almost always written right there in the job posting itself. It's a matter of reading it carefully, not skimming it.

A simple exercise: copy the text of the posting and underline the nouns that repeat — tools, duties, certifications, software names. Those are, with fair certainty, the words the system has been set up to look for. If your real experience includes that, it needs to appear in your CV using the same words the posting uses, not just synonyms. "Customer service" and "client support" might mean the same thing to a person, but an automated system sometimes treats them as different concepts.

Adapt the content to the job posting

You don't need to rebuild your whole CV every time you apply for a job. It is worth reviewing the profile, skills and experience most relevant to the position.

For example, if the posting highlights supplier management and you have that experience, make sure it comes across clearly in your work history. Sometimes reordering two sentences or swapping a word for its exact synonym in the posting is enough to make that point stand out.

Keywords have to be real

Don't add skills you don't have just because they appear in the posting. Keywords are there to describe your experience better, not to dress it up. A CV that promises more than the person can demonstrate at interview usually shows fairly quickly, and at that point the problem is no longer passing the filter, but backing it up.

Common mistakes that make a CV "invisible"

Some of the most frequent ones, seen again and again in job-orientation work:

• Writing the position you're applying for one way and your related experience in a completely different way, with no visible connection between them.
• Cramming your entire career into a single long paragraph, with no separate dates or job titles.
• Using the same generic CV for ten different postings, without adapting a single word.
• Saving the document as a scanned image instead of real text: there's nothing there for a system to read, no matter how good it looks to the naked eye.
• Leaving long unexplained gaps when there is in fact a reasonable explanation (caring for family, further study, a migration process): you don't need to justify yourself in the CV, but it shouldn't look like an unexplained blank either.

What a CV can't fix on its own

It's worth saying this clearly: no CV, however well built, guarantees a response. Some processes already have an internal candidate lined up, some postings receive hundreds of applications for a single position, and some weeks simply nobody is checking the inbox. A good CV improves your odds; it doesn't secure them. And direct contact — a phone call, a recommendation, showing up in person where the sector allows it — still opens doors that no document can open on its own.

Before you send it, check this

• Is the position you're aiming for clear at a glance?
• Does your experience related to the vacancy come across clearly?
• Are the tools and skills you genuinely have included?
• Can the document be read easily both on screen and by an automated system?
• Does the file name clearly identify who you are?
• Have you reread the posting a second time to check no relevant keyword is missing?

An effective CV doesn't need to be complicated. It needs to present your experience clearly and relevantly.