ATS-friendly CV: PDF or Word, which is safer?

Word or PDF: what actually happens inside an ATS

You have finished your CV. Should you send it as a Word file or a PDF? On Reddit and in career blogs you get different answers: "always PDF", "always Word, it's what ATS reads best", "it makes no difference".

The right answer depends on what the ATS (applicant tracking system, the software employers use to receive and sort applications) actually does with the file. Let's look at that.

What an ATS does, step by step

When you upload a CV to a job portal or an application form, the file goes through a process that looks like this:

1. The file is received and stored in the ATS database, linked to your applicant profile.
2. Text extraction runs on the file. PDFs are opened with a parser that reads the text layer. DOCX files are read with an XML parser. Scanned documents go through OCR (optical character recognition).
3. Structuring tries to identify sections, dates, job titles, education and skills.
4. Indexing stores the extracted text in a searchable format so recruiters can search for "Python" or "nurse" and find you.
5. Display to the recruiter happens in the ATS interface, not in your original file.

Step 2 is where the file type matters. If text extraction fails, you are invisible in step 4, however good your file looks in step 5.

PDF: the advantages

PDF is the most predictable format. A PDF exported from Word, Google Docs or a CV builder such as Søknadsbasen always has the same text content and structure, whichever PDF reader or ATS reads it.

Concrete advantages:

• The layout is locked. What you see is what the recruiter sees. No Word version conflicts, no fonts that disappear.
• Text extraction is reliable when the PDF has a real text layer.
• A smaller file than DOCX in most cases, because formatting is compressed.
• A professional impression. PDF signals that you have sent a finished file, not a working document.

PDF: the pitfalls

PDF has only one serious pitfall: a PDF without a text layer. It arises in three ways:

1. A scanned paper document. You have a paper CV, scanned it with your phone or the copier, and send the scan as a PDF. The file contains only an image, no text.
2. Exported as an image. Some design programs (Adobe Illustrator, old versions of Photoshop) export a "PDF" where the text is flattened into an image.
3. A "printed" PDF. If you exported with "Print to PDF" on an old printer driver, the text layer can be lost.

Always test: open the PDF, select all text with Ctrl+A, copy with Ctrl+C, and paste into an empty document. If you see plain text, you are safe. If it is empty, you need to export again from the source file.

DOCX: the advantages

The Word format has some advantages, but fewer than people think:

• Older ATS systems (especially in the 2010s) went through periods when DOCX parsing was more reliable than PDF. In 2026 this is largely out of date.
• Editable for the recruiter if they need to change the formatting or add comments. Rarely relevant.
• The standard for some public-sector application forms, especially in municipalities and state-owned enterprises.

DOCX: the pitfalls

The Word format is less stable than PDF in many ATS flows:

• Tables are often parsed wrongly. If you built your CV with a table structure, an ATS can read the table row by row instead of column by column, and your experience ends up in the wrong context.
• Embedded fonts can be missing. If you use a font that doesn't exist on the recruiter's system, the text may be replaced with a default font and the layout changes.
• Version conflicts. The Word 2010 format and the Word 2024 format have subtle differences. Older ATS systems can't handle newer XML elements.
• Macros and embedded objects. Some Word templates have macros that an ATS is meant to block, but some filter out the entire document.

What the ad and the portal say comes first

Many application portals state which file types they accept, and how large the files can be. If it says so in the ad or in the portal, follow it. If it says nothing, a PDF with a text layer is the safest choice.

When DOCX is actually better

There are few situations where DOCX is the right choice:

1. The ad explicitly says "send in Word format". Then follow the instruction.
2. You are applying through a municipal job portal that doesn't accept PDF. This is rare in 2026, but it happens.
3. A recruiter has asked for a Word file so they can edit your CV before presenting it to a client. This happens in some recruitment-agency flows.

Outside these, send a PDF.

File names and practical details

File names an ATS actually reads:

• marie-andersen-cv.pdf yes
• cv-2024-final-v3.pdf no (unprofessional, shows messy version tracking)
• Marie Andersen CV.pdf yes (spaces are fine, but hyphens are better for URL-friendliness)
• cv.pdf no (helps neither you nor the employer find it later)

Recommended pattern: firstname-lastname-cv.pdf, or firstname-lastname-cv-position.pdf if you have several versions.

File size: keep it under 2 MB. Larger files can fail to upload in some ATS systems, and often signal that you have embedded unnecessary images.

What about Apple Pages and other formats?

Don't send Pages, Numbers, ODT, Markdown or HTML as a CV format. Even if some ATS systems can technically read them, it is outside what is expected, and may require manual conversion by the recruiter. That is extra work they didn't have to do for applicants who sent a PDF.

Apple users: in Pages, choose File > Export To > PDF. Make sure "Best for printing" is selected to keep the text layer.

Test your CV against an ATS before you send it

There are free tools that simulate ATS parsing of your CV:

• Resume Worded: limited free use, shows which words an ATS picks out.
• Jobscan: compares your CV against the job ad.

Or, the simplest way: run the text-copy test described above. It catches the most common problems.

Conclusion

A PDF with a text layer is the right choice for nearly every Norwegian application in 2026. DOCX is accepted, but has more pitfalls. A scanned PDF or a flattened PDF (without a text layer) is the most common reason an otherwise good CV becomes invisible in an ATS.

The CV builder in Søknadsbasen exports a PDF with a full text layer by default. If you would rather build in Word, make sure you export via File > Export > Create PDF/XPS, not via Print > Save as PDF, which can lose the text layer.