The test takes ten seconds: open your PDF and try to select and copy a sentence. If you cannot, neither can the machine, and your application is invisible regardless of content. Common sources of image-based CVs: phone-scanned documents, Canva and design-tool exports flattened to graphics, and photos of printed CVs. Word processors and standard PDF export produce text-based files. Both Arabic and English CVs fail identically as images, and the fix is the same: rebuild in a plain document editor. Context in the ATS guide.
Text-Based vs Image-Based PDF
A text-based PDF contains selectable, copyable text that parsing software can extract; an image-based PDF is a picture of a document, produced by scanning or by design tools that flatten layouts, and extracts nothing. The distinction, not PDF versus Word, is what decides whether an ATS can read your CV.
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Adil Dahmani
Adil Dahmani is the founder of Yalliq, the AI career copilot for Arabic-speaking professionals across MENA.