Optimise Your CV for ATS: Tips for Students and Graduates

13 January 2025

Landing your first internship or graduate role is exhilarating, especially if you were up against heaps of other applicants. But before you get to meet your potential internship host company or first employer to ace the interview, you need to impress them with your CV.

Your CV has always been an important tool to secure an interview. The ever-increasing rise in the use of technology is having an impact on internship and job applications too as more and more companies and recruiters are using Applicant Tracking Systems, ATS for short, to streamline application and hiring processes.

To ensure you get your CV noticed, it’s important that you are prepared and know how to optimise your CV for ATS. When you understand how these systems work and apply a few simple strategies, you can improve your chances of standing out and getting on the interview shortlist.

What is an ATS?

An Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is software that companies and recruiters use to simplify the recruitment process. It scans, sorts, and ranks CVs before they even reach a recruiter or hiring manager. This means that if your CV isn’t ATS-friendly, it might never get seen by a human, no matter how good a fit you’d be for the role.

Employers use ATS to save time and ensure only the most relevant CVs make it through. According to Indeed, most medium to large-sized companies rely on these systems. Understanding how ATS works will give you an edge when applying for jobs or internships.

Why ATS Matters for Students and Graduates

As a student or graduate, you probably don’t have years of work experience to showcase, but an ATS-friendly CV can help highlight your skills, education, transferable experience and potential. By tailoring your CV to really match the job description, you can increase your chances of passing the initial ATS screening.

Since competition for graduate entry-level roles and even internships can be fierce, using an ATS-friendly CV can help you stand out and move one step closer to landing an interview.

Tips for Creating an ATS-Friendly CV

There are a number of things that you should take into consideration when preparing your CV for assessment by ATS. Below we give you five (5) key tips to apply when you are creating your ATS-friendly CV.

1. Use relevant keywords in your CV

ATS software looks for keywords that match the job description. Including these terms in your CV can significantly boost your chances of success. It’s important that you use the exact words from the job description in your CV.

How to find the right keywords

Read the job description carefully.
Look for repeated skills, qualifications, or software tools.
Incorporate these keywords naturally into your “Skills” and “Experience” sections.
Keep a look out for acronyms and abbreviations, and use those in your CV too, if they were featured in the job description.

2. Keep your CV formatting simple

Fancy designs may catch the eye of a recruiter, but they can confuse an ATS. Stick to clean, professional formatting. You might be safest with a simple, one-column design. Keep your CV to one page (as a student or a new graduate this should work well for you anyway). Just list your personal and contact details (not date of birth, and no photo) at the start of the CV, and include a link to your LinkedIn profile; just be sure to update your LinkedIn profile and make it professional.

There are some differences of opinion on how significant certain formatting aspects are, but to play it safe, have a look at the following more detailed tips:

Use standard fonts like Arial or Times New Roman.
Use black font only.
Use titles for the different sections like “Education,” “Work Experience,” “Skills”, and “Certifications” (as applicable to the role you’re applying for, and be sure to use the exact wording from the job description).
List your education, experience and certifications in reverse chronological order.
Use a simple date formatting including the month and the year, e.g. 05/2024-12/2024
Avoid using tables, graphics, or text boxes as ATS might not read them correctly.
Make the CV human-friendly too; keep it simple but remember that it still needs to be easily read by a real person. You could use bullet points to describe your responsibilities and achievements to make your CV easy to read.
Keep all aspects of your CV simple: the font, the headers, and even the bullet points and stay away from any fancy designs.
Proofread, and proofread again - you want your CV to be well-written and free of typos.

3. Save your CV in the right format

Once you’ve formatted the content of your CV to be ATS-friendly (and human friendly) you need to ensure you save it in the right format so that the ATS can read it. The most common advice is to save your CV either in Word or PDF. But before you do, check if the internship or job advert or description has any instructions on the file format. If it does, be sure to follow the instructions on how to save (and name) your CV. Give your CV file a clear name, e.g. YourFirstName-YourLastName-CV.

4. Highlight education and experience

Employers want to see your relevant qualifications and practical experience. Make sure your CV includes education and experience (and any other areas specifically asked for in the job description). Be sure to mention your degree, university, and graduation date. In regards to experience, focus on previous internships, part-time jobs, or volunteer work that aligns with the role you’re applying for.

5. Be smart with keywords in your CV

Avoid overloading your CV with keywords. While keywords are essential, especially for ATS-assessed CVs, stuffing your CV with them will make it look unnatural. Use them thoughtfully to maintain a professional tone and flow. And remember to keep the human in mind; although you want to tailor your CV for optimal ATS assessment, you still need to make it readable for a real human being too.

Common Mistakes to Avoid with ATS-Friendly CVs

The following tips work really well with traditional CVs too, as you want to make sure in all cases that your CV is relevant to the job description, responds to the job criteria and is easily scanned and even read by a real human being too. It’s better to avoid the following in your CV, whether it’s read by ATS or not:

Using complex designs

Complex designs can confuse ATS software (and to be honest, can be distracting to the human eye too).

Irrelevant sections

Unrelated content will dilute your CV and make it irrelevant, so better leave out unrelated hobbies or outdated achievements.

Unusual fonts or symbols

Stick to Arial or Times New Roman as unusual fonts, or symbols, can be distracting to the human eye and possibly illegible by ATS - better use commonly used and tried-and-tested fonts and avoid special characters.

Keyword stuffing

Keywords are essential for your ATS-friendly CV but stuffing your CV with them will make it sound unnatural - instead focus on context and relevance and making sure you match the job description.

Making Your CV ATS-Friendly and Human-Friendly

Even if you know for sure your CV will be first assessed by ATS, you still need to make it appealing to human recruiters as well. Both human recruiters and ATS like to see your skills and achievements quantified; apparently recruiters spend only some 7 seconds skimming a CV, so you need to make your achievements stand out in a glance.

So whenever possible, use numbers to back up your achievements and keep your language to the point. In short, follow the three simple tips below:

Tip 1: Use clear and concise language

Tip 2: Highlight your accomplishments with action verbs like “developed,” “managed,” or “implemented.”

Tip 3: Quantify your achievements where possible

If you have not had any industry-relevant work experience yet, you can use your past internship experience, part-time work or voluntary work achievements to showcase what you’ve achieved so far. Just as examples, you could quantify your achievements by saying something like:

“Streamlined inventory management processes during a 12-week internship, reducing errors by 20%.”

“Processed up to 100 transactions daily with 100% accuracy while managing customer enquiries.”

“Organised a community event for 200+ attendees, receiving 93% positive feedback from participants.”

Tools to Test Your ATS-Friendly CV

Before you submit your CV, you can use online tools to check its ATS compatibility. There are quite a few platforms available, some with free options, like Enhancv or Jobscan that allow you to see how your CV matches up against specific job descriptions.

These insights can help you refine your CV further. Just remember to always keep your CV human-friendly too. And whether you use a tool to refine your CV or not, be sure to proofread your CV before submitting it. It needs to be free of typos and written in an easy to read format.

Conclusion

Your CV is your ticket to landing an interview. As ATS is used more and more in the recruitment process, it’s important you understand and apply ATS optimisation techniques. It will increase your chances of having your CV noticed and shortlisted. Take the time to tailor your CV, test its ATS compatibility, and make it as relevant as possible for each application. With these steps, you’ll be better positioned to secure an interview for the internship or graduate role you’re aiming for.

More on the topic: Internship Interview Tips for CareerDC Interns

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