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Hey and welcome back to a new week!

In this issue:

• Don’t Be Scared of ATS: I’m going to explain this one clearly and give you a free tool to check your resume.

• One of the Most Resourceful UX Newsletters: Sketching for UX is one of my favorite newsletters fully focussed on our craft

• Manasi’s Portfolio: Beaming with personality that one!

Thank you for reading!

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The Sketching for UX newsletter is a monthly collection of the best design resource finds curated by Krisztina Szerovay.

The topics include: UX design, UI design, AI, web design, product design, visual thinking, cognitive psychology, behavioral economics and product development.
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• the list of the top 10 design resources that Krisztina discovered in the previous month

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The Truth About ATS, Resumes, and Why Most Designers Worry Too Much 📄

Every few months, the same messages and comments come back around.

Someone applies for a job.

They get a rejection email minutes later.

And the conclusion is immediate:

Over time, this has grown into a whole mythology around resumes, compliance, keyword stuffing, tools you must use, tools you must avoid, and invisible systems that supposedly filter people out before a human ever looks at their application.

I want to deal with this topic properly and calmly, and put it to rest as much as possible.

Not by pretending ATS does not exist.

But by explaining what it actually does, what it usually does not do, and where people waste a lot of energy worrying about the wrong things.

This builds on the resume guide I published last August, but this time I want to zoom in specifically on the ATS question and remove some of the fear around it.

Resumes still matter, just not for the reasons people think

In 2026, resumes are still part of the process for most design roles.

Not because they get you hired.

But because they get you to the next step.

Your portfolio is what convinces people.

Your resume is what makes sure someone actually gets there.

Most early career designers who get ghosted or receive quick rejections observe that sometimes people don’t even land on their portfolio. So that MUST be the resume? Yes but not in the way you think. They are filtered out because their resume creates friction. Missing portfolio links. Broken formatting. Unreadable PDFs (for machines). Confusing structure.

The resume is packaging. If the packaging is messy, people often never open what is inside.

What ATS systems actually do

Most Applicant Tracking Systems today do a few very simple things.

They extract text from your resume.

They try to identify sections like experience, skills, education.

They sometimes generate a summary for recruiters.

That’s it.

Some use AI in the process to increase accuracy, others still don’t.

They are not magical scoring engines that rank designers by talent though.

They are not deciding your fate in isolation.

And in most cases, they are not automatically rejecting you because you missed a keyword.

In proper tech companies, a recruiter usually looks at your resume, even if only briefly, before a decision is made. That decision might still be a rejection, but it is rarely a fully automated one.

Yes, rejection emails are templated.

No, that does not mean a machine made the decision.

There are exceptions. Some companies build additional automation on top of their hiring tools. Sometimes applications are grouped or filtered automatically and rejected in batches. You have no visibility into this and no real way to optimize for it.

Those cases exist, but they are not the norm. And they are not something you should design your entire application strategy around.

If you are applying to real product companies with real recruiting teams, the goal is simple. Make sure your resume is readable, structured, and points people to your work.

What actually breaks ATS parsing

Most issues come down to very basic technical problems.

• PDFs with non selectable text

• Fonts that are not embedded correctly

• Complex multi column layouts

• Tables that collapse or reorder content

• Icons used instead of text for key information

This is why tool choice matters more than styling.

Google Docs and Word are safe. Boring? Yes. But safe.

Canva can work if you keep things simple.

Figma is still a bad idea for resumes because of how it exports PDFs. Crucial things like proper font embedding are missing here and a lot of things are exported as images which most parsers can’t properly process.

Even if your resume looks fine visually, the underlying structure might be broken. And when that happens, both software and humans struggle to make sense of it.

The layout you actually need

A good designer resume is boring in structure.

• Name and contact details, including a clear portfolio link

• Short summary of what kind of designer you are aiming to be

• Relevant skills (check job descriptions to find out the most common)

• Experience with impact, not just tasks

• Education, including bootcamps if applicable

One column.

Clear headings.

No clever tricks.

This is not where you show design flair. This is where you remove friction.

About tailoring and keywords

You do not need to rewrite your resume from scratch for every job.

The approach that works best is still the same one I outlined before.

Maintain a master copy of your resume with everything you have ever done.

Duplicate it for each application.

Remove what is not relevant.

That process takes minutes, not hours.

If you want help with this, AI tools can be useful. Not to generate fluff, but to identify which parts of your existing experience are most relevant for a specific role.

The part people overthink: ATS optimization

Here is the uncomfortable truth.

If your resume is clean, readable, and clearly structured, you are already doing enough for most ATS systems.

There is no secret score to chase.

There is no perfect keyword density.

There is no universal checklist that guarantees success.

Most rejections happen because of fit, timing, volume, or internal constraints. Not because a system could not read your resume.

A practical way to sanity check your resume

Because this topic causes so much anxiety, I built a small free tool to help with exactly this.

You upload your resume.

You see a score that reflects basic readability and structure.

You see issues that were detected.

And most importantly, you see what the extracted data looks like.

This is not meant to be a ranking or a promise. It is simply a way to confirm that your resume passes the basic technical threshold.

If the extracted text looks clean and complete, you are fine.

If it looks broken, you know what to fix.

Run it once. Fix obvious issues. Move on.

One last thing about rejection speed

Getting rejected quickly does not automatically mean a machine rejected you.

Recruiters often skim resumes very fast, especially when roles receive hundreds of applications. They also use templates because they have no other scalable option.

Speed does not equal automation.

Templates do not equal indifference.

This distinction matters because blaming ATS often hides the real problem. The resume did not do its job of getting someone curious enough to click through.

Closing thoughts

Your resume is not where you win jobs.

It is where you make sure nothing gets in the way of your work being seen.

Do not obsess over systems you cannot control.

Do not chase myths that turn applications into a technical puzzle.

Focus on clarity, readability, and relevance.

Once your resume clears that baseline, your portfolio and your skills take over. And that is where your energy is much better spent.

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👀 Portfolio Showcase

Today: Manasi Ghutukade

Today we’re looking at the portfolio of Manasi Ghutukade, a product design student at Indiana University Bloomington, graduating in 2026. She already brings real-world experience to the table through an internship at MathWorks — a highly complex, technical product environment — while also showing work that leans much more consumer-facing.

That combination alone makes this portfolio interesting. What stood out to me immediately, though, is how personal and cohesive it feels. This is not a generic student portfolio. It’s illustrated, lightly animated, warm, and unmistakably hers. There’s a clear point of view here, and that matters a lot — especially at this stage.

This is already a strong portfolio. And with a few focused improvements, it could become a genuinely standout one by the time she hits the job market.

That’s it for this week—thanks so much for the support! ♥️

Do you want your own portfolio reviewed in-depth with a 30-minute advice-packed video review? Or do you require mentoring to figure out a proper strategy for your job search?

I got you!

• Book an in-depth portfolio or resume review with me

• Book a mentoring session with me

• Book a quick 15 min chat to ask a question and see if we vibe

Keep kicking doors open and see you next week!
- Florian