Long before your resume or CV ever reaches a human recruiter, it has to get past a huge hurdle: the ATS, or Applicant Tracking System. This is the software that big airlines use to scan your resume and decide whether you’re a good match for the job.
To do that, the ATS extracts all the information in your resume, makes sense of it, and compares it against the criteria the airline has set for the role. Modern ATS platforms have moved well beyond simple keyword spotting; many now use natural language processing that can assess how you’ve phrased your experience, not just whether specific words appear. That’s a big change in how these systems used to work, but it doesn’t change the basics: a resume that the system can’t read properly never gets a fair chance, no matter how well it’s written.
It’s up to you to make your resume as easy for the computer to “read” as possible; otherwise, you risk having your application rejected in seconds. Follow the rules below, and your resume will stand the best possible chance.
1. Grammar and Spelling
Your resume is one of the most important documents in your job search. You want it to reflect the very best of who you are, and big international airlines like Emirates and Delta Air Lines want their cabin crew to be meticulous and have a fine eye for detail.
Simple spelling and grammar mistakes will kill your resume fast. The ATS will recognise common spelling mistakes, while more complicated errors, punctuation problems, or grammar issues will confuse the machine. In either case, your application risks automatic rejection.
What to do:
- Use the spell check feature in your word processor
- Don’t rely on spell check alone: read through your resume at least twice to spot obvious mistakes
- Print it out and slowly read every line; errors are easier to miss on a screen
- Get an independent assessment: ask a friend or family member to ruthlessly check it
Top tip: Use an alternative checker such as Grammarly. Even the free version of this online tool is very good at picking up and correcting mistakes that your normal word processing software didn’t spot.
2. Design and Format
This is not the time to get creative with your design skills. Middle East carriers like Emirates and Qatar Airways are conservative, professional companies, and there are clear conventions for resumes that you shouldn’t stray too far from.
If you’re building your own resume rather than using a template, keep these rules in mind:
- No pictures, photos, tables, or non-standard bullet points: The ATS can’t reliably read this kind of formatting, and you risk confusing the system into missing essential information.
- Use one standard font throughout: Arial, Calibri, Times New Roman, or Helvetica are all safe choices. Less common or decorative fonts are more likely to render or parse inconsistently, and mixing multiple fonts increases that risk further.
- Don’t put information in the header or footer: Many ATS platforms skip these sections entirely, which can mean your contact details vanish before a human ever sees them.
- Avoid multiple columns: Some attractive templates spread information across two columns, and this remains one of the most reliable ways to confuse an ATS. Keep it to one column.
Worth knowing: The old advice to avoid PDF entirely and always submit a Word document is largely out of date. A clean, text-based PDF, one exported directly from Word or Google Docs rather than scanned or screenshotted, now parses just as reliably as a .docx file in most major systems. The exception is older or stricter platforms (Taleo is the best-known example), where .docx remains the safer choice. The one format that genuinely fails every time is an image-based PDF, so if you’re ever unsure, open your file and try to select and copy the text: if it copies cleanly, it’s readable.
If a job posting or application portal tells you explicitly which format to use, follow that instruction over any general rule; it’s the strongest signal you’ll get.
3. Section Titles
The ATS automatically extracts the information in your resume and sorts it into predefined fields, such as career history and education.
Make that as easy as possible by using simple, standard section titles that the system will recognise:
- Professional Summary (or just Summary)
- Key Skills
- Work Experience (or Work History)
- Education
- Personal Interests
Creative alternatives like “My Journey” instead of “Work Experience” look distinctive to a human but can confuse an ATS trying to categorise your content correctly.
4. Formatting Your Work Experience Section
List your work experience in reverse chronological order, with your current or most recent job first. If you have a long career history, think carefully about how far back you need to go; most ATS platforms weigh recent experience more heavily than older roles.
Structure each entry like this:
Company, Location Job Title (Month Year to Month Year)
For your current role, list the start date and use “Present” or “Current” instead of an end date. Follow this with bullet points describing your work. This order makes it as easy as possible for the ATS to extract the right information into the right fields.
5. How to List Your Education
Depending on where you’re from, your educational background may look quite different from a standard university transcript. Most ATS platforms are built with GPA scores and university degrees in mind.
If you have a different kind of qualification, or just a high school education (the minimum most Gulf carriers require), there’s still a simple way to make it ATS-readable: list the name of the school, college or university and the town or city it’s in, then the course you completed, then the date you completed it. You can add grades or accomplishments afterwards. Keeping this order consistent makes life easier for the system.
6. What to Include (and What to Leave Out)
The ATS searches for specific information in your resume to slot into mandatory fields in the system. Make sure your resume includes:
- Full contact details: name, address, phone number (with country dialling code), and email address
- Work experience
- Education
- A personal summary and a short bulleted list of key skills
- A personal interests section, most airlines value well-rounded, well-travelled candidates, and this section is where that comes through
What you don’t need to include:
- Your date of birth: already on your application, and not needed by the system or the recruiter at this stage
- Your nationality: Likewise, already captured elsewhere in your application
- Your photo: This will confuse the ATS, and airlines such as Emirates specifically require photos to be submitted separately rather than attached to your resume
- A separate objective statement: if you want to include one, work it into your personal summary instead
None of this guarantees a pass, and it’s worth being honest about that. Good formatting removes the barriers that would otherwise get a genuinely well-matched candidate filtered out for the wrong reasons. It can’t manufacture a match with the role that isn’t really there.
Your ATS Formatting Checklist
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Spell-checked and proofread at least twice, including a read-through on paper or by someone else
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Used a single standard font throughout, no mixing, no decorative choices
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Kept your layout to a single column, with nothing in the header or footer
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Used standard section titles: Summary, Key Skills, Work Experience, Education, Personal Interests
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Listed work experience in reverse chronological order, with dates clearly formatted
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Saved as a text-based PDF or .docx, matching whatever the application portal asks for, and tested that the text is properly selectable
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Removed your photo, date of birth, nationality, and any separate objective statement
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Checked your draft against our Free CV Templates, built to be ATS-friendly from the ground up
For the full Seven Steps of building your resume from scratch, check out The Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Your Perfect Cabin Crew Resume. For tool recommendations to check your finished draft, see The Best Online Resume Writing Resources.
Go from blank page to a finished cabin crew CV or resume by following our extensive resume writing guide. Here's where to go next.
