Greenhouse ATS resume format
Greenhouse is the short form: name, email, CV, maybe a cover letter and a couple of questions. Less to get wrong than Workday, which means the file you attach carries almost all of the weight.
Short form, heavier file
A Greenhouse application usually asks for very little: your name, contact details, a CV, and sometimes a cover letter or two custom questions. There is no long autofill to review, which is a relief and a risk.
The risk is that nothing shows you how your file was read. Whatever the parser made of your layout is what gets stored and searched, and you never see it. So the layout has to be right the first time.
Format rules that matter here
- One column. A sidebar can interleave with the main column when the file is flattened to text, which scrambles your work history.
- Nothing in the header or footer. Contact details placed there are frequently dropped. Put your name, email and phone in the body of the first page.
- Standard section headings. Work Experience, Education, Skills. Not *Where I Have Made An Impact*.
- Month YYYY dates. *March 2022 to Present* is read reliably. *03/22* often is not.
- No tables or text boxes. Both are common causes of missing or reordered content.
- Selectable text, not an image. If you cannot select a line with your cursor, no parser can read it.
If you want to see what a parser makes of your current CV, open it, select all, copy, and paste into a plain text editor. Text that arrives scrambled or out of order arrives that way for the recruiter too. The ATS resume guide covers this test in full.
Answer the custom questions properly
Greenhouse lets employers add their own questions, and those answers sit right next to your CV in the recruiter's view. A one line answer to *why this company* reads exactly as it looks, and it is the cheapest place to separate yourself from the other applicants.
The vocabulary still matters
Recruiters search their own pipeline by keyword. If the posting says *demand generation* throughout and your CV says *lead gen*, you are harder to find, even though a human would call them the same thing.
Score your CV against the posting before you send it. It takes about ten seconds and needs no account.
Frequently asked questions
What resume format does Greenhouse prefer?
A single column PDF with selectable text, standard section headings, and dates as Month YYYY. Greenhouse application forms are short, so there is no autofill step to catch a bad parse for you.
Does Greenhouse reject resumes automatically?
Greenhouse is a system recruiters work in, not a robot that bins applications on a score. What it does do is make your application searchable and filterable, so a CV that parses badly or misses the posting's vocabulary is harder to find in a pile of four hundred.
Should I fill in the optional cover letter?
If the field exists and the role is one you actually want, yes. It is one of the few places on a Greenhouse form where you control the narrative, and a tailored letter costs you nothing once the CV is tailored.
How do I tailor for a Greenhouse posting?
Paste the boards.greenhouse.io URL into [the tailoring tool](/tailor-cv-from-job-link). It reads the posting directly, so you do not have to copy the description out by hand.
Where to go next
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