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Modern · Single column · ATS 5/5

Modern Minimal CV template

No rules, no boxes, no icons — the hierarchy is carried entirely by space.

Modern is the family to reach for when you have no strong signal about a company’s house style: current spacing, one accent colour, and nothing a hiring manager would have to interpret. One column and no portrait: the plainest structure a CV can have, and the one that travels furthest across markets.

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

The design

About the Modern Minimal layout

Modern Minimal takes every rule, panel and icon off the page and lets spacing do the work: a light, widely tracked name over one centred line of contact details, then small grey labels announcing each section with nothing drawn underneath them. Skills print as plain text and education collapses to one line per degree, which keeps a long career inside two pages without shrinking the type. With no decoration to misread, it also parses cleanly in every applicant tracking system.

Who it’s for

The readers and situations this layout was drawn for.

  • Roles where restraint reads as confidence
  • Text-heavy CVs that need room to breathe
  • Applications submitted through strict online portals

Key features

What is actually different about this template on the page.

  • No dividers, boxes or icons anywhere
  • Centred name with a single contact line
  • Plain-text skills and one-line education
  • Extra-wide spacing between sections

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.

Sections stack in a single flow, so the order you set in the editor is the order the parser records: summary, then experience, then education, then whatever you put next.

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 Modern Minimal 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: Roles where restraint reads as confidence.

Case 2

A career that reads in order

One uninterrupted flow suits a history where the last three roles are the argument: a reviewer reads titles, dates and outcomes downward, without correlating a sidebar with the job it belongs to.

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. Modern Minimal has no photo slot to remove, so the same file works in every market you send it to.

Make it yours

Customising Modern Minimal

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

Modern Minimal ships with #111827 as its accent. The accent drives headings, rules and any highlighted detail. A deep navy, a slate or a saturated brand colour all hold up — the hierarchy does not depend on the hue, so choosing is a taste decision rather than a legibility one.

Fonts and heading style

A humanist or geometric sans throughout gives the intended look. Setting a serif for headings only is the one substitution that changes the personality without breaking the spacing. 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

Summary, experience, education and skills carry the weight. Projects and certifications drop in without upsetting the rhythm, and anything you are not using can be hidden rather than left empty. 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.

Modern Minimal: 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 Modern first, then designs with a similar ATS score from other families.

Modern ATS

modern · one column

Free

Modern Clean

modern · one column

Free

Modern Compact

modern · two columns

Pro

Modern Corporate

modern · two columns

Pro

Modern Creative

modern · one column

Pro

Modern Elegant

modern · one column

Pro

Start your CV with Modern Minimal

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.