md2document
Use case

A Markdown resume that survives six months and an ATS

Resumes age fast. Write the source once in Markdown, keep it under version control, re-export when something material changes. No fighting Word margins every cycle.

Elia Kuratli
By Elia Kuratli
·5 min read
Open the converter

Why Markdown is the right resume source

Word turns a resume into a layout problem. Adding one bullet re-flows the page. The font you used last year is no longer in your version of Word. The bullet glyph swaps on PDF export. None of that is your problem when the source is plain text and the layout is the theme's job.

Markdown also reads cleanly in a text editor at a glance - useful when you grep your career history for "led migration" before rewriting it for a new role.

Five steps

  1. Open the converter.
  2. Pick the Resume template - the editor fills with a starting structure.
  3. Replace the placeholders with your real experience.
  4. Pick the aplle design and the inter font pairing - the safest combination for most fields.
  5. Export PDF. Save the source .md alongside it.

Structure ATS systems parse cleanly

  • H1 - Your name. One line. The first text the ATS indexes.
  • Contact line. Email, phone, LinkedIn URL, city. Separate with middle dots or pipes. Plain text - no icons.
  • H2 - Summary. Three or four sentences. Lead with the most senior role and the headline outcome.
  • H2 - Experience. H3 per role. Use the format "Title · Company - 2022–present". ATS systems extract titles, companies and dates from H3 lines like this.
  • Bullets with outcomes. Start with a verb. Anchor with a number. "Led migration that reduced cost 38%" - not "Was responsible for cost-reduction initiatives".
  • H2 - Selected projects / Skills / Education. Bulleted, one line each.

What to leave out

Skip headshots on US-targeted resumes. Skip two-column layouts. Skip icons for skills. Skip "References available on request" - recruiters know. Skip the objective statement; the summary replaces it.

Skip the cover page and ToC - the Resume template defaults to no cover, no ToC, no page numbers. A resume is a one-page document that does not need chrome.

Updating without breaking the layout

When you change roles or finish a project, edit the Markdown, re-export. Two minutes. No "Word version drift", no missing fonts, no margin tweaks. Save the configuration to a JSON file the first time so the theme and template choices come back automatically.

Common questions

Is the PDF ATS-friendly?

Yes. Text is rendered as text (not images), in a single column, in normal reading order. Major ATS systems - Workday, Greenhouse, Lever, iCIMS - parse the headings, the contact line, the dates and the bullets correctly. The biggest risks to ATS parsing are decorative elements (multi-column, icons, headshots), not the source format.

One page or two?

One page if you have under ten years of relevant experience. Two pages above that. Three pages is almost never the right call - readers skim the first half and skip the rest.

Should I include a headshot?

Skip it for US-targeted resumes - some ATS configurations reject files with embedded images, and US recruiters are trained to not see them. A small headshot is more common for European resumes; embed via drag-and-drop if you want one.

Which design works best for a resume?

aplle for product, design and engineering. balandir for corporate / finance. rcrport for academic / formal. Avoid the expressive designs (gurnroad, newprint) - they hurt ATS parsing and reader trust at the same time.

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