Hi! Former HR generalist here. Your career coach is correct: a lot of companies use an ATS (applicant tracking system) to scan through uploaded resumes and rank them based on how closely they match the job posting. It focuses heavily on matching keywords between your resume and the job description, so the goal is to make your resume “bot-proof” and readable by the ATS. There are a lot of articles out there on best practices, but the general idea is to stick with something minimalistic, clean, and simple. Images, logos, icons, background colors/objects, and other non-text items are most often not readable. Simple decorations like underlines or bullets are the easiest to interpret.

ATS scans are never perfect (which is also why a ton of HR systems have you upload your resume and then input the same information afterward), but they’re the norm among a lot of big companies now. I keep an ATS version of my resume and a more “designed” version, depending on whether it’s being uploaded into application oblivion or being handed directly to a hiring manager.

Thank you so much, this is super helpful!