Are LaTeX Resumes ATS-Friendly? (And How to Check Yours)
By Shihab Shahriar Antor · Updated August 2026 · 7 min read
Yes. A LaTeX resume passes applicant tracking systems as readily as one from Word, because an ATS reads the text layer of your PDF and LaTeX produces a real text layer. What decides it is the layout, not the tool: single column parses reliably, two columns and sidebars often do not, and anything drawn as an image or an icon is not text at all. You can settle it for your own file in about thirty seconds by copying the text out of the PDF and reading what comes back.
What an ATS actually reads
An applicant tracking system takes your PDF and pulls the text out of it, then tries to work out which piece of that text is your name, which is an employer, and which is a date. It is doing the same job as copying and pasting, with some guessing on top. That is why the question is never "was this made in LaTeX" but "does the text come out in a sensible order".
LaTeX is fine on the first half of that. A PDF from pdflatex or xelatex carries a genuine text layer, the same as one exported from Word. A scanned resume, or one exported as an image, does not, and those are the files that come back from a parser completely empty.
What actually breaks parsing
| Choice | How a parser handles it | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Single column | Reads top to bottom, in order | The safe default for any portal application |
| Two columns or a sidebar | Often interleaves the two, so sections land inside each other | Keep it for a CV you email or hand over in person |
| Contact details as icons only | Icon fonts carry no meaningful text, so the phone number disappears | Put the words next to the icon, or instead of it |
| Skills drawn as bars or rings | Not text, so the skill is invisible | Write the skill out |
| A photo of anything | Not text | Keep photos only where the country expects one |
| Name in the page header | Some parsers skip headers and footers entirely | Put your name in the body of the first page |
| Tables for layout | Usually fine, but cell order can surprise you | Test it, and read the paste |
None of that is specific to LaTeX. A two-column Word resume with icon contact details fails in exactly the same way. What LaTeX gives you is a template that stays consistent, and full control over which of these choices you are making.
The thirty-second test
Do not take anyone's word for whether a template is safe, including ours. Open your compiled PDF, select everything, copy, and paste it into a plain text editor. What you are looking at is close to what the parser receives.
If you would rather do it on the command line, pdftotext -layout resume.pdf - prints the same thing. Either way, the two questions are whether the order still makes sense and whether anything has gone missing.
Which templates to start from
For portal applications, start single column. The CV and resume library marks which layouts are built for parsing, and a few of the well-known community templates are single column by design, including Jake's Resume and the plainer moderncv styles. Two-column templates such as AltaCV and Deedy look better on a page a person reads, and are a reasonable choice when you are handing the CV over directly or attaching it to an email.
Academic applications are a different problem. Search committees read the document themselves, so an academic CV is optimised for a human and length is not a fault. Parsing only matters where a system sits between you and the reader.
Two things people worry about that mostly do not matter
- "PDFs get rejected, send a .docx." Modern systems read PDFs. Some older portals do ask for Word specifically, and when the form says so, do what the form says. That is a request about file format, not a verdict on PDFs.
- "LaTeX fonts confuse parsers." Standard LaTeX fonts embed the mapping a reader needs to recover the text. If your paste comes back correct, the fonts are fine. If it comes back with gaps in the middle of words, that is worth fixing, and the paste test is how you find out either way.
Open a single-column template and run the paste test on the PDF it produces.
Browse resume templatesFrequently asked questions
Are LaTeX resumes ATS-friendly?
Yes, as long as the layout is. An ATS reads the text layer of your PDF, and LaTeX produces a real one, so the file format is not the problem. Single-column layouts with ordinary section headings parse reliably. Two-column layouts, sidebars, icon-only contact details and skills drawn as bars are what break parsing, and they break it the same way in Word.
How do I check whether my resume is ATS-friendly?
Open the PDF, select all the text, copy it, and paste it into a plain text editor. That is close to what the parser receives. If the order still reads sensibly and your name, email, phone number and job titles are all present as text, it will parse. Anything missing was never text: it was an icon, an image, or a drawing.
Is a one-column or two-column LaTeX CV better for ATS?
One column. Parsers read the text in the order the PDF stores it, and a two-column layout often interleaves the two columns, so your skills end up inside your job history. Keep two-column templates for a CV a person reads directly.
Which LaTeX CV templates are ATS-friendly?
The single-column ones. Jake's Resume and the plainer moderncv styles are single column by design, and the CV library marks which layouts are built for parsing. AltaCV, Deedy and HipsterCV are two-column and better suited to a CV you send directly rather than through a portal.
Should I send a PDF or a Word file?
Send the PDF unless the application form asks for Word. Modern systems read PDFs, and a PDF is the only way to guarantee the layout survives. Some older portals do specify .docx, and when they do, follow the instruction rather than arguing with it.
Do icons in a LaTeX CV hurt ATS parsing?
They do when they are the only thing carrying the information. An icon from a font like FontAwesome extracts as a meaningless character or nothing at all, so a phone number shown as an icon and digits is fine, while an icon standing in for the word "email" is not. Write the words out and keep the icons as decoration.
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Written by Shihab Shahriar Antor , AI Engineer & Founder of Shahriar Labs. Builder of LetX (collaborative LaTeX) and QuantumSketch (AI STEM video).