Is this specific to one applicant tracking system?

The guidance is written against how mainstream systems (Workday, Greenhouse, Lever, Taleo, iCIMS and similar) parse and rank resumes. They differ in detail, but the failure modes are shared: unreadable structure, missing role keywords, and bullets with no measurable outcome.

Do I need to pay to read these guides?

No. Every guide linked from this page is free and needs no account. The guides themselves are always free to read in full; the optional rewrite of your own resume is a separate service you can arrange by email.

Are the examples real people's resumes?

No. They are composed examples built from role data. Where a number belongs you will see a placeholder such as [X]% rather than an invented statistic, so you substitute your own figure.

How are these pages produced?

Each page is composed from a structured dataset for that role and checked against a published quality gate before it goes live. The editorial policy sets out how content is produced, reviewed and corrected.

Resume guides by role

Pick your target role to see resume bullet examples with metric placeholders, the keywords that role is screened on, and the mistakes that get it rejected.

Engineering

Data & Analytics

Product & Project Management

Design

Marketing

Sales & Customer Success

Operations

Operations Manager resume guide

People & HR

HR Specialist resume guide

Starting from scratch? Copy the free ATS-friendly resume template first.

Not sure which keywords you are missing?

Run the free ATS check with your resume and the job description.

Run the free ATS check

How to use a role resume guide

A resume guide is only useful if it changes what you write. Work through it in this order:

Read the bullet examples for your role. They show the shape of a strong bullet: what you owned, what you did, and what changed as a result. The metric placeholders are deliberate — substitute your real numbers, never the example's.
Compare against your current bullets. Most rejected resumes are not badly written; they are written as job descriptions. "Responsible for the payments service" describes a role. "Cut payment failures from [X]% to [Y]% by adding idempotent retries" describes an outcome.
Cut anything you cannot defend. If you cannot explain a claim for two minutes in an interview, it does not belong on the page. Padding is the fastest way to fail a screen.
Check the keyword section for the same role. Keywords belong in your experience bullets, where they describe real work — not in a skills list nobody reads. See the ATS keyword guides for the clusters per role.
Then run the free ATS check with the actual job description to see which required terms your resume still misses.

One structural rule that matters more than wording: keep the file simple. A single column, standard section headings (Experience, Education, Skills), no text in images, no tables holding your work history. Parsers read text, and anything they cannot read does not exist.

Common questions

Is this specific to one applicant tracking system?: The guidance is written against how mainstream systems (Workday, Greenhouse, Lever, Taleo, iCIMS and similar) parse and rank resumes. They differ in detail, but the failure modes are shared: unreadable structure, missing role keywords, and bullets with no measurable outcome.
Do I need to pay to read these guides?: No. Every guide linked from this page is free and needs no account. The guides themselves are always free to read in full; the optional rewrite of your own resume is a separate service you can arrange by email.
Are the examples real people's resumes?: No. They are composed examples built from role data. Where a number belongs you will see a placeholder such as [X]% rather than an invented statistic, so you substitute your own figure.
How are these pages produced?: Each page is composed from a structured dataset for that role and checked against a published quality gate before it goes live. The editorial policy sets out how content is produced, reviewed and corrected.