Single-column reverse-chronological. One column running the full width of the page: contact details in the body of the document, a short summary, then Experience with employer, job title, location and dates on their own lines, then Education, then Skills, then certifications or licences. Every role is listed newest first with dates in the same format throughout. This is the default and should be your default. It is the layout every parser was built around, it is what a recruiter expects to skim, and it is the only version you can submit anywhere without wondering what happened to it. If you only maintain one resume file, maintain this one.
Hybrid. The same structure, with a block of four to eight lines near the top that names the skills, tools and licences you want to be matched against — for example Epic, CPT coding, SQL, Workday HCM, forklift certification, CDL Class A, Spanish. Below that, the full dated employment history stays intact. Use it when your recent job titles don't describe what you can do: a teacher moving into instructional design, a bartender moving into account management, a veteran translating a military occupational specialty into civilian terms. The rule that keeps it ATS-safe is that nothing is removed from the history — you are adding a signpost, not replacing the chronology.
Functional / skills-only. Groups achievements under headings like "Leadership" or "Project Management" and pushes employment to a bare list at the bottom, or leaves dates off entirely. Parsers need a title, an employer and a date range next to each other to build an employment record; strip that apart and the system may store an empty work history even though your document is full of text. Recruiters also know this format is usually hiding something, so it draws the scrutiny it was meant to avoid. If you have a gap, say so in one line — "Career break 2022–2023, full-time caregiving" — and keep the chronological structure.
Two-column with a sidebar. A narrow column of skills, contact details or a photo beside a wider column of experience. It looks tidy and it survives some modern parsers perfectly well, but you cannot know in advance which one you are feeding. The failure mode is specific: the parser reads the page as lines rather than as columns, so your sidebar text gets interleaved with your job descriptions and the result is unreadable. Keep this version for emailing a named person, for a careers fair, or for printing — and keep a single-column version for every portal.
Designed template with graphics. Icons instead of the words "Email" and "Phone", a headshot, donut charts showing language ability, five-star skill ratings, a timeline graphic. None of that is text, so none of it is extracted. Worse, the text that does exist is often sitting inside text boxes or shapes that parsers skip. There is one legitimate use: creative, design and front-end roles where you are emailing a human being directly, and the resume is doing portfolio duty. Even then, attach a plain version as well, or link to one.
Plain text. A .txt file, or the same content pasted into a textarea on an application form. Many portals ask you to paste your resume, and some job board profiles are built entirely from pasted text. Build it once: no tabs, no bullet characters beyond a hyphen, section headings in capitals, a blank line between blocks, dates written out as 03/2021 – 08/2024. Keep it in a note on your phone so you can paste it on a bus. It is ugly and it is also the single most reliable version you own.
A note on country: these conventions describe US applications. In Germany, France, much of Latin America and parts of Asia, photos, dates of birth and signed cover pages are normal; in the US, UK, Canada and Australia they are not, and US employers often prefer not to receive them. If you are applying across borders, build a separate file for each market rather than compromising on one.
