How to Convert Your CV to PDF (Without Breaking the Formatting)

Why send your CV as a PDF, not Word

PDF is the de-facto standard for sending a CV anywhere outside an explicit "upload your Word file" form. Three reasons it wins.

• Formatting is locked. A .docx file opened on a recruiter's machine renders against whatever version of Word they have, with whatever fonts are installed — your beautifully-spaced template can collapse into a different font, different line heights, different page breaks. A PDF looks identical on every machine.
• ATS systems handle text-based PDFs just as well as Word documents. The myth that "ATS only reads .docx" is from 2010 — every modern Applicant Tracking System (Workday, Greenhouse, Lever, Taleo, iCIMS) parses text-based PDFs natively.
• It's read-only by default. A recruiter can't accidentally turn on Track Changes and email back "Working Copy v3 - John's edits.docx" with your CV mid-revision.

The exceptions: if the application portal explicitly asks for a Word document, send a Word document. Some staffing agencies prefer .docx because they re-format your CV before passing it to their client. Read the job ad — most say "PDF or Word", a few say "PDF only", and the rare one specifies "Word only". Match what they ask for.

The single best method: your app's built-in PDF export

Use the app that already has your CV open. Every modern document editor has a one-click PDF export that preserves text, fonts, layout, and embedded images. The output is what we call a "text-based PDF" — the recruiter sees what you see, and an ATS can still extract your structured data.

Two things to check before you click Export:

• Your file is finished. PDF is a snapshot — fix typos, finalise dates, swap the photo first.
• Your fonts are embedded or standard. If you used Calibri, Arial, Helvetica, Georgia, or Times New Roman, you're fine — they're system fonts everywhere. If you used a custom downloaded font, your app's PDF exporter will normally embed it automatically; verify by opening the PDF on a different machine.

Microsoft Word — Save As PDF

Word's built-in PDF export is the cleanest path for a .docx CV. It preserves layout pixel-perfectly and produces an ATS-readable text PDF.

1. Open your CV in Microsoft Word.
2. Click File → Save As (Windows) or File → Save a Copy (Mac).
3. Choose the destination folder.
4. In the "Save as type" or "File Format" dropdown, pick PDF (*.pdf).
5. Before saving, click Options (Windows) or More options (Mac). Check the box "Document structure tags for accessibility" — this is what tells the PDF parser where headings, lists, and tables are. Many ATSes use these tags. Click OK.
6. Click Save. Name the file something a recruiter can find on their desktop later, like Firstname-Lastname-CV.pdf — not Document1.pdf or My-resume-final-FINAL-v2.pdf.

On Word 365 / Word 2021, the equivalent path is File → Export → Create PDF/XPS Document. Same result, slightly different button position. The Office mobile apps on iPad and iPhone also have it: tap the share icon → Send a Copy → PDF.

Google Docs — Download as PDF

If your CV lives in Google Docs, the export is one click and the result is identical to Word's — same text-based, ATS-readable PDF.

1. Open your CV in Google Docs (docs.google.com).
2. Click File → Download → PDF Document (.pdf).
3. The file saves to your Downloads folder with the same filename as the Doc. Rename it before you send.

Google Docs handles fonts cleanly — anything available in the Doc's font picker (including downloaded fonts) renders correctly in the PDF. Tables and lists keep their structure. The one watch-out: if your Doc uses Google's "Inserting Image" feature for headers (some templates do this), the header may end up as an image in the PDF rather than selectable text. Check by opening the PDF and trying to select your name. If you can't, the template is image-based and you need a different one.

Pages (Mac) — Export to PDF

Apple's Pages produces a clean PDF with embedded fonts by default.

1. Open your CV in Pages.
2. Click File → Export To → PDF…
3. Choose Image Quality: "Best" if your CV has a photo; "Good" is fine for text-only.
4. Leave "Include borders" and "Include comments" unchecked.
5. Click Next, name the file, click Export.

The universal fallback: Print to PDF

If you're using an app without a native PDF export — LibreOffice, an old Word version, a niche CV builder, a web page — every modern OS lets you "print" to a PDF file instead of to paper. Same result: text-based, ATS-readable PDF.

• Windows: File → Print → Printer dropdown → "Microsoft Print to PDF" → Print → choose where to save.
• macOS: File → Print → bottom-left PDF dropdown → "Save as PDF" → Save.
• Linux: File → Print → Printer: "Print to File" → Output format: PDF → Print.
• iOS / iPadOS: in any app's share sheet, tap Print → pinch the print preview thumbnail to enlarge it (this is the hidden trick) → tap share icon at the top → Save to Files.
• Android: in any app, Print → save as PDF in the destination dropdown.

Print-to-PDF is the most portable method but produces a slightly larger file than a native export because it rasterises some elements that the native exporter would keep as vector. For a one-page CV the difference is irrelevant — both end up under 500 KB.

Mistakes that quietly break the PDF you send

• Scanning a printed CV and sending the scan. The scan is a picture, not text. The recruiter can read it but an ATS extracts nothing — your application lands in the "no parseable data" pile. Always go from the source document, never from paper.
• Exporting a Word file with Track Changes still on. The PDF then bakes in every red-line edit and comment. Accept (or reject) all changes first, turn off Track Changes, then export.
• Using a font the export embeds badly. Custom or pirated fonts can render correctly in the source app but get substituted in the PDF. Stick to Arial, Calibri, Georgia, Helvetica, Times New Roman, Plus Jakarta Sans, Inter, or anything from Google Fonts (Google Docs handles these natively).
• A photo that's stored as a transparent PNG over a coloured background. Some PDF exporters flatten the transparency badly. If your photo looks fine in the source but weird in the PDF, re-save the photo as a JPEG with the background already baked in.
• Headers and footers that contain your contact info. Some ATS systems strip header/footer content entirely — your phone and email vanish. Move contact details into the document body, top of page 1.
• Filename that signals "not finished". Resume-v17-FINAL-actually-final.pdf reads as careless. Use Firstname-Lastname-CV.pdf or similar.
• PDF/A export. Word offers ISO PDF/A as an option for archival; some ATS parsers handle the extra structural tags badly. Stick to plain PDF (1.7 or default) unless the employer specifically asks for PDF/A.

About online PDF converters

If you search "convert Word to PDF" you'll find dozens of free converters: SmallPDF, ILovePDF, PDF24, Adobe's online tool, etc. Most work fine technically. The real concern for a CV is privacy.

Your CV contains your full name, contact details, work history, education, sometimes date of birth and a photo. Uploading it to a third-party converter means handing all of that to whoever runs the service. Most have privacy policies that claim files are deleted after some hours, but you can't verify that, and a handful have been caught indexing uploads in past breaches. For a one-time conversion: use your local app's export, not an online tool. If you don't have any local PDF export and have to use one, use Adobe's (the trade-off is they're a known entity with a real privacy policy) and never use one that asks for your email to send you the file.

A faster way: start from a template that exports a perfect PDF

All of the above assumes you already have a Word CV that you're converting. If you're starting from scratch — or if your current CV needs a refresh anyway — building it in a tool that's designed for the PDF output skips the conversion problem entirely. Templates are already laid out for A4 / Letter, fonts are guaranteed to embed, the export is a single click, and ATS-safety is baked in.

How to verify the PDF is good before you send it

Once you have the PDF, three quick checks tell you whether it's recruiter-ready.

1. Open the PDF in a different application than the one that exported it. Use a browser (drag the file into Chrome / Safari / Edge) or a PDF reader. If it looks the same as the source, fonts and layout embedded correctly. If it looks different, something didn't carry across.
2. Select your name with the cursor and copy-paste it into a text editor. If the pasted text matches what you see, you have a real text-based PDF. If the paste is empty or garbled, you have an image-based PDF and the ATS won't parse it.
3. Check the file size. A typical text-only CV should be 50–300 KB. With a photo, 200–800 KB. If yours is 5 MB+, something inside is bloated (usually an oversized photo) — recompress and re-export.