How screening software reads your CV

Large employers in Nairobi, Lagos, Johannesburg and Cairo do not read every application. Adverts can draw hundreds of CVs, so the first pass is automated: an applicant tracking system (ATS) converts your file to plain text, then searches it for the words in the advert.

What breaks the machine

• Text inside a photo, a scanned PDF or a graphic design template — the system sees a blank page.
• Two columns, tables and text boxes: the reading order scrambles and your job titles land in the wrong place.
• Contact details in the header or footer. Many parsers drop headers entirely, so you look unreachable.
• Icons instead of words for phone and email; decorative fonts under 10pt.

The fix is unglamorous: one column, standard section headings, a normal font, and a real .docx or text-based .pdf exported from a word processor — never a photograph or a screenshot.

What the recruiter then does

A shortlisted file gets about thirty seconds. The reader looks for three things in this order: can this person do the job, have they done something comparable, and is anything on the page obviously contradictory. Write for that scan — clear job titles, dates on the right, achievements near the top of each role.