How to Create a Professional CV in 2026: ATS-Friendly Formatting, Common Mistakes, and Best Practices
Why Your CV Still Matters in 2026
Putting together a CV can take longer than you'd expect. You trim a sentence, change the spacing and wonder whether you need a photo. The employer reading it, meanwhile, needs to work out whether your experience fits the job. A professional CV makes that decision easier by giving them clear examples of what you've done.
When several people apply with similar qualifications, those details matter. A polished template won't explain much if the experience section is vague. Online applications add another consideration: an Applicant Tracking System, or ATS, may need to extract your information before a recruiter reviews it.
It helps to work on the content before getting caught up in the design. Once you're happy with what it says, choose a layout that's easy to follow and check the file before sending it. The advice here is for a CV used in job applications, rather than a detailed academic CV.
How an ATS Actually Reads Your CV
If you've uploaded a CV and watched an application form fill itself in, you've seen CV parsing at work. The software extracts details such as your job titles, employment dates, education and skills, then places them in a candidate profile. Hiring teams use the wider ATS to organise applications and search for relevant experience.
Some platforms also offer AI matching. Greenhouse's Talent Matching, for instance, compares a CV with criteria chosen by the hiring team. That particular feature doesn't automatically accept or reject candidates. Different platforms and employers use different processes, so there isn't one universal ATS score to aim for.
What you can control is how easily your information can be read. Greenhouse lists columns, complex tables, graphics and text boxes among possible causes of parsing problems. Contact details in a header or footer may also be missed.
A single column, a standard font and headings such as “Work Experience” or “Education” are sensible choices. Include the job advertisement's relevant terms where they describe your actual experience, especially named tools and qualifications.
A parsing error doesn't necessarily end your application. Greenhouse says the original CV can remain attached even when its details need to be entered manually. Always check the fields filled in by the application form; don't assume the software has put every date and job title in the right place.
The Catch With Canva CV Templates
It's easy to see the appeal of Canva. The templates look finished before you've written a word. The difficulty comes when you try to fit several years of experience into a narrow sidebar, or squeeze a useful achievement around a large photograph.
A simple Canva CV can work well. The concern is the finished document: multiple columns, decorative icons and text inside graphics may make it harder to read or parse. A complicated Word template can have the same problems. Roche's application guidance also recommends avoiding these elements.
For a conventional office role, Microsoft Word or Google Docs gives you a straightforward place to start. Keep the text easy to follow and export a PDF if the employer accepts it. In a creative field, the design of your application may deserve more attention. A portfolio link lets you show that work while keeping a simpler CV available for recruitment portals.
Does Your CV Need a Photo
For most US and UK applications, you can leave it out. Harvard advises against including a picture, and France Travail's guidance on British CVs also notes that photographs aren't customary.
A CV photo takes up room you could use for experience or skills. It also introduces appearance into the assessment, which can open the door to unconscious bias. Your qualifications should give the employer enough to work with.
The answer does depend on where and how you're applying. In France, for example, France Travail describes a photo as optional. Check the local convention, the industry and the employer's instructions before deciding. For an ordinary office application, leaving it out is a reasonable default. Roles in acting or modelling may have separate headshot or portfolio requirements.
What to Put on Your CV
You don't need an unusual structure to make your experience interesting. Start with sections a reader will recognise:
• Contact details: your name, professional email address, phone number and city. Add a LinkedIn or portfolio link if it helps the application.
• Professional summary: two or three lines about your relevant background, strengths and the kind of role you're looking for. Be specific enough that it couldn't describe almost anyone.
• Key skills: the tools and abilities the job actually calls for. Give examples of transferable skills, such as communication, in your experience section too.
• Work experience: your job titles, employers and dates, followed by short bullet points about your work and achievements. Put the most recent role first.
• Education and qualifications: your degrees, institutions, dates and relevant training or certificates. Say clearly if a qualification is still in progress.
• Other relevant experience: languages, projects or volunteering that give the employer a better reason to consider you.
There's room to adjust the order. If you've recently graduated, a relevant project or qualification might deserve to come before a short work history. With more experience, your employment usually takes priority. The National Careers Service gives similar guidance.
You can also leave things out. An old course or unrelated short job doesn't need as much space as the experience that fits this vacancy.
Writing Bullet Points That Say What You Did
“Responsible for administration” may be accurate, but it leaves the reader doing most of the work. Did you organise meetings, handle invoices or maintain customer records? A few concrete details make the experience easier to understand.
Begin CV bullet points with a verb that describes your contribution: developed, managed, analysed, improved or implemented, for example. Then explain the work and, where you can, what it achieved. Here are three illustrative rewrites:
• Weak: “Responsible for social media.”
Stronger: “Managed a weekly content calendar and published 24 LinkedIn posts over three months.”
• Weak: “Helped with administration.”
Stronger: “Introduced a shared invoice tracker, reducing average processing time from four days to two.”
• Weak: “Worked on presentations.”
Stronger: “Researched 12 partner organisations and developed a presentation used in business development meetings.”
Use your own figures, of course. Revenue, time saved and output volumes can all help, provided you can explain where the numbers came from. A percentage needs enough context to mean something.
Don't force a number into every sentence. If you created a checklist that colleagues still use, say what the checklist covers and who uses it. That's useful evidence even without a dramatic performance increase.
Tailoring Your CV Without Starting Over
You don't have to rewrite your entire CV for every application. Keep a main version with your experience, then choose what deserves the most attention for each job.
Read the advertisement before editing. Note the essential requirements, the tasks that come up repeatedly and any named software or language skills. Match these with examples you can honestly provide. Then adjust your summary and move the most relevant bullet points higher in each role.
Suppose an internship involved writing articles, updating spreadsheets and contacting clients. A content role might call for more detail about the articles and search engine optimisation. An administrative role might make the spreadsheet work and client correspondence more relevant. The underlying experience stays the same.
Use the employer's wording where it fits. If the advertisement names a tool you've used, include its name and explain how you used it. Roche recommends giving keywords that sort of context. Avoid keyword stuffing, and don't add qualifications just because they appear in the advert. An unchanged, generic CV can leave the reader unsure which parts of your background relate to their vacancy.
Common CV Mistakes Worth Catching
Some problems are easy to miss once you've read your own CV twenty times. Before sending it, look for:
• A decorative layout that makes employers, dates or job titles difficult to find.
• An unnecessary photo or personal details, such as marital status, that don't help assess your suitability.
• Long paragraphs and lists of duties with no examples of completed work.
• Old information taking up space needed for something more relevant.
• An informal email address, a typo in your phone number or a broken link.
• Spelling errors, mixed date formats or inconsistent spacing.
• AI-written descriptions that exaggerate what you did or don't sound like you.
Be careful with skill-rating bars, too. “80% Excel” doesn't tell someone whether you can build a PivotTable. Naming the functions you use gives them a clearer idea. For languages, use a level you can support, with a recognised framework or certificate where helpful.
If possible, ask someone else to read the exported file. They're more likely to notice the repeated word or missing date that your eyes have started skipping over.
Using AI to Edit Your CV
AI can be helpful when you know what you want to say and can't quite get the sentence right. It can shorten a paragraph, catch grammar mistakes or suggest which of your existing examples fits a job description.
Give it facts to work with. A prompt such as “Make this bullet point clearer using only the information I've provided” is a useful start. Add that it shouldn't invent achievements, software or numbers.
Then read the result carefully. “Supported a campaign” can easily become “led a campaign” in a generated rewrite. You may also find impressive-sounding phrases that say very little. Keep the wording you could comfortably explain in an interview, and change anything that overstates your role.
Harvard's advice is to treat AI output as an edit to consider, with your own review still essential. It also recommends keeping personal and confidential business information out of these tools. Check whether the employer has given any instructions about AI use. You remain responsible for every sentence you submit.
A Final Check Before You Apply
Once the content is right, take a few minutes to check the file itself. This CV checklist covers the details most worth reviewing:
• Keep the layout consistent, with familiar headings and enough space between sections.
• Choose a readable font and size. Arial or Calibri at 11 points or above is a sensible starting point.
• Remove unnecessary graphics and keep essential information in the document body.
• Check your contact details, dates and job titles. Test every link.
• Follow the employer's file type and size requirements. Use PDF when accepted and DOCX when requested.
• If you send a PDF, make sure you can select its text. Copy some into a plain-text editor and check that it reads in the right order.
• Give the file a clear name, such as FirstName_LastName_CV.pdf.
• Open the exported version to check page breaks, spacing and missing text.
• Correct any mistakes in fields populated by the application form, then proofread once more.
Selectable text is a useful check, though it doesn't guarantee that every ATS will read the document perfectly. Follow the application instructions even if your usual preference is a different format.
Make Your Experience Easy to Understand
A good CV gives someone who hasn't met you a fair understanding of the work you can do. Clear examples, relevant achievements and a layout that's easy to read go a long way. ATS-friendly formatting helps those details survive the upload, while tailoring helps the recruiter see why they matter for this job.
Before your next application, put your CV beside the vacancy. Use the checklist above and find one vague line you can replace with a specific example. Then read the page from the recruiter's point of view. Your strongest relevant experience should be easy to find without needing you there to explain it.
