How to Convert Your CV to ATS Format (Without Starting From Scratch)

You have a beautifully designed CV that you made on Canva. It looks great, but every time you apply for a job, you get an automated rejection. The problem isn't your experience; it's that your CV is completely unreadable to Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS).

The good news is you don't need to rewrite your entire career history. You just need to strip the design down to its bare bones. Here is exactly how to convert your current CV into an ATS-friendly format in about 15 minutes.

Step 1: Move Everything into a Single Column

If you have a sidebar for your skills and contact info, delete it. ATS parsers read from top to bottom, left to right. Two columns confuse the parser, causing it to mix your phone number with your job duties. Copy everything into a single, vertical Google Doc or Word document.

Step 2: Delete All Graphics and Tables

Remove your photo, logos of past employers, icons next to your phone number, and those visual progress bars you used to show your skill level. The ATS cannot read images; it will either ignore them or fail to parse the surrounding text.

Step 3: Standardize Your Section Headers

The ATS needs to know where your work history starts. If you named your sections "What I Do," "My Academic Journey," or "Core Competencies," change them immediately to:

• Experience
• Education
• Skills

Step 4: Use Standard Fonts and Bullet Points

Change your font to something universally readable like Arial, Calibri, or Times New Roman. Instead of using custom checkmarks or arrows for bullet points, use the standard round black dot.

Step 5: Verify the Conversion

Once you have stripped your resume down, you need to test if it worked. JobTether allows you to upload your newly formatted document to get a free ATS score. We will show you exactly how our parser reads your file, ensuring no data gets scrambled before you send it to an employer.

Start From Plain Text, Not From the Old File

The most reliable conversion is not an edit — it is a rebuild. Heavily designed documents carry invisible structure (text boxes, nested tables, floating frames) that survives deletion of the visible styling and continues to break parsing in ways you cannot see.

Copy all the text out of your existing CV into a plain text editor, which strips every trace of that structure. Then paste it into a clean single-column document and apply simple formatting: bold for headings and job titles, standard bullets, nothing else. It feels like more work than editing in place, and it takes about twenty minutes and produces a file that reliably parses.

Rescue the Contact Details First

Designed CVs very often place contact information in the document header, in a coloured sidebar, or inside a graphic banner. All three are commonly dropped during parsing, which produces the worst possible outcome: a resume that scores well and cannot be used to contact you.

Move your name, phone number with country code, email, city, and LinkedIn URL into the normal body of the document as ordinary text lines at the very top. This is the single highest-value step in the whole conversion, and it is the one people most often skip because the original looked fine.

Convert Visual Elements Into Words

Design-led CVs encode meaning in things a parser cannot read. Every one of these needs a text equivalent:

• Skill rating bars and star ratings → grouped text lists, with honest proficiency labels if you want to convey level.
• Icons standing in for labels → the actual words. An envelope glyph is not the word "Email."
• Timeline graphics and infographics → conventional dated entries.
• Text inside images or logos → retyped as real text. Company logos convey nothing to a parser; the company name does.
• Colour used to signal importance → bold, or better, put the important thing first.

Keep Both Files

Converting does not mean discarding the original. The designed version still has a legitimate role — attached to a direct email, linked from a portfolio, or handed over in person at a final-round interview where a human is the only reader.

Keep the ATS version as your default for every portal submission and job-board application, and treat the designed one as a supplementary artefact for contexts where you know a person is looking. This is standard practice for designers and increasingly common elsewhere. The mistake is having only the designed version and wondering why online applications never convert.

Test Your New ATS Format

Don't guess if your conversion was successful.

Check your parser compatibility instantly.Upload your CV for a free ATS score at jobtether.comand let Brutus verify that your new format is 100% machine-readable.