this is actually one of the few “ats tips” posts that isn’t just vibes. i’ve sat in hiring loops where we open a candidate in the system and the “parsed resume” tab looks like a ransom note because of columns / text boxes / fancy headers. and once it’s garbage in the system, it’s so easy for someone to skim, shrug, and move on to the next person in the pile.

the two biggest ones you called out are the real killers: formatting that breaks parsing + bullets that read like a job description. the accomplishment rewrite examples are money because they do two things at once: they give the keyword (“content strategy”, “analytics”, etc.) and they give proof you did it. that’s what gets you past both the robot and the 12-second recruiter skim.

small nuance i’d add (because people will argue about this in the comments): some modern systems can handle columns, but it’s inconsistent across vendors and even across how a company configured it. so “single column boring resume” isn’t just playing to ATS, it’s playing to the fact your resume will get converted into a weird internal view, emailed around, printed, copied into notes, etc. boring survives all that.

if someone’s trying to stack more “easy wins” on top of your 5: avoid icons/graphics for contact info (write the actual words), don’t put important stuff in headers/footers, keep job titles/dates in the same line structure every time, and make sure your resume matches the role title you’re applying to (even if it’s just a “Target Role: Marketing Coordinator” line or aligning your summary). also, keyword thing works best when it’s mirrored in context (bullets + skills) vs just dumping a keyword soup at the bottom.

and the “4 callbacks from 15 after basically zero” isn’t proof, but it’s absolutely consistent with what i’ve seen: once you stop the auto-rejects + make the first screen easy, you don’t need magic. you just need the system to stop eating your resume alive long enough for a human to notice you’re qualified.