Every other week in my 20 Chapel Street office, a client opens our first session with the same sentence: “I think the ATS is eating my CV.” Sometimes it is. Usually it isn't — the CV is reaching a human reader perfectly well, the human reader just isn't impressed. But the myth is so pervasive that it's worth taking apart properly.
This essay is what I tell every new client on the topic. Nothing here is theoretical. It's what I see working, week after week, across seven different ATS platforms and about two hundred CV rewrites a year.
What an ATS actually does
An Applicant Tracking System is database software. Its job is to help recruiters and HR teams keep thousands of candidate records organised, searchable and compliant. The big names in 2026 are still Workday, Greenhouse, Lever, SmartRecruiters, iCIMS, Taleo (yes, still) and Teamtailor. They are inventory systems, not intelligent gatekeepers.
When you upload a CV, three things happen:
- The file is parsed into structured fields — name, email, work history, education, skills.
- A copy of your original file is stored alongside the parsed data.
- A recruiter can later search the database by keyword, filter by years of experience, or shortlist manually.
Note what is not happening: there is no algorithm scoring your CV out of 100, no “match percentage” automatically deciding your fate, and no robot rejecting you. Those exist in bolt-on modules at a few very large employers, but the majority of UK hires still come down to a human recruiter running a keyword search and opening the first 30 CVs that show up.
The ATS is not a judge. It's a filing cabinet with a search box. Your job is to be findable, not to pass a test.
The myths worth retiring
Myth 1: “You need a plain-text CV with no formatting.”
This was true in 2008. Modern parsers handle tables, columns, bold text and most standard fonts without breaking a sweat. What they still struggle with: text inside images, CVs exported as scanned PDFs, and unusual section headings (“My Journey” instead of “Work Experience”). Keep the formatting — just keep it structured.
Myth 2: “Keyword-stuff the CV in white font at the bottom.”
This trick is now a fast way to get flagged and blacklisted. Many ATS platforms strip hidden text during parsing, and the ones that don't will expose the trick to any recruiter who highlights the page. Don't do it.
Myth 3: “You need an exact 80% keyword match.”
The 80% figure comes from one LinkedIn post about one feature in one platform. It is not a universal threshold. What's true is simpler: if the job description says “stakeholder management” six times and your CV doesn't use the phrase once, you will be harder for a recruiter to find when they search. That's worth fixing. Obsessing over a percentage is not.
The five edits I actually make
When I sit down with a client's CV, these are the five things I check first. They take about an hour combined and move the CV from “competent” to “findable.”
1. Match the job title to the language the market uses
If your internal title is “Customer Success Architect, Band 4” and every job ad you want calls it “Senior Customer Success Manager” — use the market phrase, then the internal one in brackets. Recruiters search the market phrase. Your database entry needs to contain it exactly once, somewhere near the top.
2. Mirror the job ad's verbs, not its buzzwords
Read the job ad. Underline every verb: “lead,” “deliver,” “drive,” “shape,” “partner.” Make sure the first word of at least half your bullet points is one of those verbs. This is the single fastest way to make a CV feel relevant without faking anything, because you're adjusting the framing, not the content.
3. Move the skills section above the work history — sometimes
For technical, analytical or tool-heavy roles (engineering, data, finance ops), a clear skills block with the tools and languages listed above the work history massively improves recruiter search speed. For leadership or generalist roles, keep skills further down and lead with a short narrative summary instead. The rule is: whichever block contains your most searchable keywords should be the one above the fold.
4. Use the conventional section headings
“Professional Experience,” “Education,” “Skills,” “Certifications.” These are the headings parsers know. Creative alternatives (“Where I've Worked,” “What I've Learned”) look charming to a design-minded founder and confuse a parser to the point of filing your work history under “Other.” Save the personality for the cover letter.
5. Submit the right file format — and keep a plain backup
For the UK market in 2026: .docx is still the safest universal format. PDF is fine for direct email applications, and most modern ATS platforms now parse PDF cleanly, but if you're asked to upload to a legacy system (the NHS, some councils, a few insurance companies), .docx will parse more reliably. Keep both versions ready to go.
What matters more than keywords
Here's the uncomfortable truth I share with clients on the call where they expected me to produce a magic keyword list: once the CV gets past the search filter, it lands on a human's screen for an average of eleven seconds. Those eleven seconds are what actually decide whether you get to the next round.
So after I've done the five ATS edits above, I spend about 70% of the remaining time on the things a human will see in the first glance: the name block, the one-line summary, the top two bullets under the most recent role, and the visual rhythm of the page. That's where CVs actually get rejected — not by the database.
A simple test before you submit
Before you click “apply,” do this: copy your CV, paste it into a plain text document, and read the result. If the work history is still in order, the dates are still visible, the job titles are still legible and your skills are still where they should be — the parser will handle it fine. If the text comes out as a scrambled mess or loses whole sections, that's the signal to rework the formatting, not the keywords.
Two minutes. Saves hours of guessing.
One last thing
The best CV I've ever seen — the one that opened every door the client wanted opened — had about eleven repeated keywords, plain headings, and a quietly brilliant one-line summary that made every recruiter want to meet its owner. The ATS didn't love it any more than anyone else's. The humans did. That's the bit worth optimising for.