6 ATS-friendly résumé or CV templates for your Spring job search

The sun is finally shining and Spring has well and truly set in throughout the UK. The trees are in blossom, the lambs are in the field and much of our beloved countryside looks like a picture postcard once more. Sadly, not everyone will be appreciating this wonderful time of year with too many of us stuck in an office or factory, performing a role we don’t like for far too many hours each week.

You might have heard the saying: “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” This is often attributed to Confucius although the oft-quoted Chinese philosopher is unlikely to be the source in this case. Regardless, the saying holds true – and if this glorious spring weather has simply reminded you how much you hate your job, it’s time to search for a career you love!

With that in mind, we’ve recently put together 6 lovely CV templates that have all been designed with ATS software in mind. Each template includes example content but will work for a whole host of jobs, so pick your favourite, get customising and land that role you’ve dreamt about for too long this Spring!

Find out more about ATS software:

• What is an ATS compliant CV or Résumé?
• Passing the ATS test – a checklist

1. Free ‘Arial Narrow’ Professional Free CV or résumé template

The font choice stands out with this template – we’ve used Arial Narrow, an unusual choice, which typically is harder to read. However, by introducing some font spacing, we’ve made this font easily legible, giving you a unique and highly-attractive way to present your information. Other features include soft grey highlights and attractive stand-out headings – none of which use elements that are known to confuse ATS software. Get this CV template.

2. ATS-friendly CV template with ‘Classic’ design

This template is pretty clever in its use of colour to divide up the CV sections and to draw attention to your achievements. It also uses Garamond which is one of our favourite fonts for creating classic-looking templates. Like our other CVs in this collection, it has been designed with ATS software in mind – but we’ve still managed to include social media icons. “How!” you might ask – well, check it out here: Classic ATS-friendly CV template

3. ‘Highlight’ ATS CV design

This template has a whole range of subtle style details whilst still managing to keep itself machine-friendly. In particular we use shaded text and bolding to highlight particular achievements, but you’ll find lots of other lovely details, with not a table or text box in sight. Get this template here.

4. Simple ATS-friendly CV in Word format

This CV has a lovely, fresh and simple design with one column, spread over two pages. Great use of spacing helps this CV really stand out, whilst the soft grey headings and simple dividers add some lovely style details. Get this template here.

5. Free ATS-friendly smart CV template in Microsoft Word format

This super-smart template uses the simplest of style details – paragraph boxes, shaded text and dividers – to set out your information in an attractive way. Note that the template does not use any text boxes or tables to create this layout – all styles are applied at font or paragraph level, to minimise the risk of parsing issues. Get this CV template here.

6. School leavers CV template (2019)

You might wonder why we’ve included our so-called ‘School Leaver’ CV template in this collection. The reason is that it’s just a good, basic template that is laid out neatly, without any boxes, tables or graphical elements. Even if you’re not a school leaver, this template is a fantastic choice where a basic, simple look is what you need. Get this template here.

Good luck!