Templates / General purpose

Classic

Single column, conventional headings. The safest choice for applicant tracking systems and the widest range of professions.

Example text — you replace it with yours in the builder.

  • LayoutSingle column
  • Best forGeneral purpose
  • ATS-friendlyYes
  • PhotoOptional
  • PriceFree

Who this suits

A safe default for general purpose roles and for any application going through a large employer's careers portal, where the first reader is software rather than a person.

How it handles ATS parsing

Single column with a linear reading order, conventional section headings, and no layout tables. Contact details sit in the body text rather than a page footer, because footer content lives outside the text layer and many parsers drop it entirely.

What you can change

Accent colour, font body, font heading, spacing, scale, line, section order, which sections appear, page size (A4 or Letter), and every word of the text. Nothing here is locked behind a payment.

How to write a CV for any job in Classic

Classic follows the order most recruiters expect and reads cleanly in applicant tracking systems, so it suits almost any application. The work is in the wording: every line should tell the reader something they could check.

Sections, in this order

  1. Professional summary — three lines: who you are, what you have delivered, what you want next
  2. Core skills — nine to twelve, grouped
  3. Experience — most recent first, with dates
  4. Education
  5. Certifications and training
  6. Languages

Bullet points that work

  • Cut the average reply time to customer emails from [two days] to [four hours] by [introducing shared templates].
  • Trained [six] new starters on [the booking system], halving the time before they worked unsupervised.
  • Managed a [$X] budget for [office supplies and travel], finishing [8%] under plan.

Figures in [brackets] are placeholders. Use your own, and only ones you could explain in an interview.

Mistakes to avoid

Read next: Nine CV mistakes that get applications rejected

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