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Classic · Single column · ATS 5/5

Classic Professional CV template

Centred capitals and ruled headings — the CV shape employers have expected for decades.

A traditional document for a reader who expects one: measured type, plain hierarchy and no ornament that a formal committee would read as flippant. One column and no portrait: the plainest structure a CV can have, and the one that travels furthest across markets.

Live preview of the Classic Professional template, rendered at full page size with an example CV. The preview is the same code that generates your PDF.

The design

About the Classic Professional layout

Classic Professional is the document most hiring managers picture when they ask for a CV: your name centred in spaced capitals, one line of contact details beneath it, and every section heading centred between two hairline rules. The body stays a plain single column with dates set to the right of each entry, so nothing competes with the writing and nothing confuses a parser. Choose it when the employer is conservative and the safest possible design is the point.

Who it’s for

The readers and situations this layout was drawn for.

  • Public sector and civil service applications
  • Finance, insurance and administration roles
  • Anyone asked to send a conventional CV

Key features

What is actually different about this template on the page.

  • Centred name in widely spaced capitals
  • Section headings ruled above and below
  • Conventional single-column body with right-aligned dates
  • Plain-text skills grouped by category

ATS score 5/5 · Excellent

How this layout behaves in an applicant tracking system

Everything on this page is text a parser can lift: real headings, one linear reading order, and no content that exists only as a graphic. It scores 5 out of 5 because there is nothing here for a parser to guess at.

Because there is only one text column, an extractor never has to decide which block to read first — the page has exactly one reading order and it is the one you can see.

There is little left to fix here. If you want to see how the rest of the parser-safe range compares — and what a 5 out of 5 is actually measuring — the ATS CV templates page scores every layout on the same criteria.

Parsing checklistATS score 5 out of 5
Reading order
Single flow
Headings
Real text
Tables
None
Images
None
Selectable text
Yes

Scores are our own assessment of how a parser handles the layout — never a guarantee about one specific employer’s system.

In practice

Three situations Classic Professional is the right answer to

Templates are chosen badly when they are chosen in the abstract. Here is what sending this one actually looks like.
Case 1

A public-sector or graduate scheme

Structured schemes score CVs against fixed criteria, often mechanically. A conventional document with conventional headings lets the assessor find each criterion where they expect it to be. The obvious case: Public sector and civil service applications.

Case 2

A long formal record

One column with generous leading suits a document that may legitimately run to three pages — an academic or legal CV is not trying to be a one-page pitch, and compressing it signals the wrong thing.

Case 3

An anonymised or blind-screening process

Public bodies and larger employers increasingly strip identifying detail before review. A layout with no portrait slot survives that process unchanged, which is one less way for your CV to arrive looking damaged. Classic Professional has no photo slot to remove, so the same file works in every market you send it to.

Make it yours

Customising Classic Professional

The template sets the structure; everything inside it is yours. Colours, fonts, spacing, section order and paper size are all controls in the CV builder, and the preview updates as you change them — nothing is applied blind.

Accent colour

Classic Professional ships with #1f2937 as its accent. Near-black or a very dark neutral is the honest choice. These layouts are designed to survive being photocopied and scanned by a committee secretary, and a mid-tone accent is the first thing to disappear when they are.

Fonts and heading style

A serif body is the point of this family. If you switch to a sans, drop the font size a notch — the spacing is set for serif text and looks loose without it. Heading case — uppercase, capitalised or as typed — is a separate switch, and it changes the character of the page more than most people expect.

Spacing and density

Three sliders control density — type size, line height and the gap between sections — and on a one-column page each of them affects the whole document evenly, so fitting two pages into one is a matter of small adjustments rather than deletions.

Sections and order

Education often outranks experience here, and publications, awards and references all have a legitimate place. Reordering takes one drag, which matters because the convention differs by field and by country. Every section can be renamed, reordered or hidden, and Pro adds custom sections for anything the standard set does not cover.

Paper size and export

A4 or US Letter, switched in one control, with the layout re-flowing to the new page rather than being scaled to fit. The PDF is generated from the same code you see in the preview, so what you approve on screen is what downloads.

Classic Professional: common questions

Yes. It scores 5 out of 5 on our parsing checks: one column, standard headings, no tables, no text inside images and no icon fonts. An applicant tracking system reads the sections back in the order you arranged them.

Alternatives

Related templates

Other layouts worth comparing before you commit — the closest matches from Classic first, then designs with a similar ATS score from other families.

Academic CV

classic · one column

Pro

Elegant Serif

classic · one column

Pro

Executive Classic

classic · one column

Pro

Formal CV

classic · two columns

Pro

Government CV

classic · one column

Pro

Legal CV

classic · one column

Pro

Start your CV with Classic Professional

Open it with the example content already in place, replace it with your own, and download a PDF when it reads the way you want. Switching to another template later keeps every word you have written.

Free plan, free download, no credit card.