Most candidates assume that if their CV looks good on screen, it will work everywhere.
That assumption is quietly costing people interviews.
Because long before a human sees your CV, a piece of software has already decided whether it is readable, searchable and usable at all.
And that software is far more fragile than most people realise.
What Actually Happens When You Upload a CV
When you upload your CV to a job board, ATS or recruiter database, it is not stored as a document.
It is parsed.
Parsing software reads your CV line by line and converts it into structured data so it can be searched later. Names, job titles, skills, dates, locations.
That parsed version is what recruiters actually search.
If parsing fails, your CV does not disappear.
It becomes partially invisible.
The Hidden Risk Most People Don’t Know About
Certain elements introduce multiple instructions into a document.
Two of the most common are:
- Hyperlinks
- Ampersands (&)
To a human, they are harmless.
To weaker parsing engines, they can act like conflicting commands.
A hyperlink is not just text.
It is text plus a hidden instruction to open another object or window.
An ampersand often signals a compound instruction rather than a word.
In robust enterprise systems, this is usually handled correctly.
In many job boards and older ATS platforms, it is not.
What Happens When Parsing Breaks
When parsing software becomes confused, it often stops reading.
Not always immediately.
Not always obviously.
But from that point onward, the rest of your CV may never be indexed.
That means when a recruiter later searches their database, they may only see:
- Your name
- Your phone number
- Your email address
And nothing else.
Your experience is there, but it is not searchable.
Your skills exist, but they are not visible.
From the recruiter’s perspective, your CV looks empty.
Why This Is So Dangerous
The recruiter does not know anything has gone wrong.
They do not see an error.
They do not get a warning.
They simply never see your experience appear in searches.
Which means you are not rejected.
You are never surfaced.
Why This Happens More Than People Think
Parsing software is not intelligent.
It is rule-based.
It expects:
- clean text,
- simple structure,
- predictable formatting.
Anything that introduces ambiguity increases failure risk.
Hyperlinks do that.
Ampersands do that.
Especially when they appear early in the document.
If your email address at the top of the CV is hyperlinked and parsing breaks immediately afterwards, everything below it may be lost.
This Is Why “Modern” CV Advice Often Backfires
Candidates are often told to:
- add clickable links,
- use symbols to save space,
- optimise for visual appeal.
That advice is usually based on human reading, not machine ingestion.
ATS systems do not reward creativity.
They reward compliance.
How Parsing Software Is Meant to Be Treated
Think of parsing software like an old but strict administrator.
It does not appreciate shortcuts.
It does not infer meaning.
It does not recover gracefully.
You must speak to it exactly as intended.
That means:
- Plain text email addresses (no hyperlinks)
- Writing “and” instead of “&”
- Simple headings
- Predictable structure
- No embedded instructions
This is not about dumbing down your CV.
It is about ensuring it exists where decisions are actually made.
The Simple Rule
If a feature helps a human but risks confusing software, remove it.
Your CV’s first job is not to impress.
It is to load completely.
Only then does it get the chance to persuade.
Final Thought
Most candidates don’t fail because they lack experience.
They fail because their experience is never fully seen.
Parsing software is sensitive.
Easily confused.
And completely unforgiving.
Treat it the way it was designed to be treated.
Because if the system can’t read your CV properly, no one else ever will.
