Advice on CV Templates and the Emirates, Qatar & Etihad ATS software for shortlisting candidates

Most free CV templates are designed around tables and columns, and colours. Want to know how such templated CVs get parsed by a proper HR ATS (Applicant Tracking System) and not the free ATS checks you see on Google?

Be very careful when you use a CV template as your resume / CV undergoes some major transformation when background screening takes place by the Applicant Tracking System (ATS) in Taleo.

Sadly, most ATS are unable to parse columns. This results in parsed text getting garbled, and some well qualified candidates with strong customer service experience gets rejected. Ever wondered why your CV gets rejected, and for some of you even quite instantly on submission!

It is critical that you create a CV/Resume that is worked on carefully and optimised for HR ATS systems. I know that from a visual perspective, a templated CV with tables and columns with some coloured borders are truly nice to look at. But, with airline recruiters receiving hundreds of CVs , they are now placing full reliance on Artificial intelligence (AI) which is what the ATS is.

The ATS will merge / undo the sides of the tables, and read the text left to right and then down, and not like how we would read it, left side first and down, then the right side. With ATS, some lines and text are so mixed up when parsed and the final result is just gibberish.

Good news is some of the text and certain phrases are still searchable but the resume now produced for the recruiter does not make any sense. With luck, a few CVs using standard templates may still get shortlisted albeit ranked very poorly by the algorithm.

You are truly better off avoiding tables and columns altogether if you can. A well written 2 page CV or resume using Word is better than using the free standardised multi-column CV template.

I know how much you want to be an Emirates cabin crew. You are just reducing your own chances by using fancy templates, and risk your CV/resume getting mangled by the ATS. Even if your template is borderline, your CV may not rank very high for keywords searched by the recruiter.

Colours can get problematic too! White text on any coloured background often gets deleted by the ATS software. It views it as white text on white paper and therefore purges the data here.

In some extreme cases, CV parsing on multi-format templates can cause a critical error, and your CV does not even get ranked and it goes into that dreaded black hole.

If you need advice on how to write a CV to obtain a high ranking on ATS, I am able to offer a one-on-one Zoom consultation. It will also benefit you if you are a CV fresher or where English isn't your first language. Whatever your background is, a strong ATS optimised CV will increase your chances to get shortlisted in this new whirlwind 1-2 day recruitment now used by Emirates.