A CV template's layout affects parsing whenever it asks a reader, human or automated, to infer meaning from something other than plain, sequential text: an icon standing in for a label, a rating shown as filled dots instead of a word, a table cell, or text set inside a decorative shape. None of these choices are guaranteed to break on any specific system, and none are guaranteed to work either, since different applicant tracking systems parse a page differently and there is no single standard every one of them follows. What can be said with more confidence is which layout elements introduce risk and why, separate from column order, which is its own, larger topic.
Contact details tucked into a header or footer
Some templates place a phone number, email address or location inside a running page header or footer rather than in the main body of the first page. Many parsers extract text from the page's main content flow and can treat a header or footer as page furniture rather than document content, in the same way a page number or a running title would be treated, which means those fields sometimes do not make it into the extracted record at all. Keeping contact details inside the ordinary body content, near the top of the page, is a more conservative choice specifically because it avoids relying on a parser correctly recognising header or footer text as data worth keeping.
Icons standing in for a text label
A phone icon next to a number, an envelope icon next to an email address, or a location pin next to a city name reads instantly to a human eye, but an icon on its own carries no text for a system to extract, unless the template also includes a hidden text label alongside it. Where an icon appears without any accompanying text, the field next to it is the only thing a parser actually sees, and a field with no label at all is more easily misclassified than one clearly marked "Phone" or "Email". This is a case where a layout choice that improves the human-facing look can quietly work against the machine-facing read of the same content.
Skill bars and rating graphics
A skills section shown as filled bars, dots or stars next to each skill communicates a rough proficiency level at a glance to a human reader, but that graphic carries no number or word a parser can read. The skill name itself usually still extracts fine as text, but the proficiency signal the bars were meant to convey is generally lost entirely, since there is nothing textual behind the graphic to recover. A plain word such as "Advanced" or "Familiar" next to the skill name preserves that same signal in a form a parser can actually read alongside the human-visible one.
Tables
A table looks organised to a human eye, but its content is structured as a grid of cells rather than a flowing sequence of paragraphs, and some parsers read a table's cells out of their intended order, or skip a table's contents altogether, since a grid does not map cleanly onto the plain reading order most parsers expect. A CV built with genuine tabular data, such as a language proficiency table with several columns, is more exposed to this than a CV using ordinary paragraphs and lists for the same information.
Text set inside a shape
A summary or a skill name placed inside a coloured badge, a rounded pill shape or a graphic banner can render as an image in some export paths, or as text so heavily wrapped in decorative markup that a parser reads it out of sequence with the rest of the page. Plain text sitting directly in the document flow, styled with ordinary weight and colour rather than embedded inside a graphic container, avoids that risk entirely, at some cost to visual distinctiveness.
What CVBuilderKit's own PDF keeps as real text
CVBuilderKit's PDF download renders the sheet you see in the builder and prints it through the browser's own layout engine, which keeps the output as real, selectable text rather than a rasterised image of the page. That addresses one specific risk, a PDF that is actually a picture of a CV with no text layer underneath it at all, which some export tools produce. It does not, on its own, address the layout choices covered above: an icon with no text label, a rating shown only as a graphic, or a table, still carry the same parsing risk inside a text-based PDF that they would in any other format, since the risk comes from how the content is structured, not from whether the file holds real text.
Illustrative example: a plain layout against a decorative one
Illustrative comparison. A CV lists five skills using filled bar graphics next to each name, contact details inside a page header, and a "5 years experience" badge rendered as a rounded shape near the top. A second version of the same content lists each skill with a plain word for its level, moves contact details into the ordinary body text near the top of the page, and states "5 years of experience" as plain text in the summary line instead of a badge. Both versions look reasonable to a human reader. The second is the safer bet for a parser, because every field a reader would want extracted exists somewhere as plain, sequential text rather than depending on a graphic or a page element some systems treat as non-content.
Parsing varies by system, and no layout is guaranteed
None of this amounts to a guarantee. Applicant tracking systems vary widely in how they handle icons, tables and graphics, and a layout choice that causes a problem on one system may parse cleanly on another. What the choices above have in common is that they all ask a parser to do more interpretive work than reading plain text in order requires, and reducing that interpretive work is the only lever available, since there is no way to test a CV against every system in use before submitting it anywhere.
Build yours
Writing an ATS-friendly resume covers the wider set of formatting choices that affect parsing, and reading order and why it matters for applicant tracking systems covers the column-related risk this post deliberately left out. Compare a plain and a more decorative option in the full set of templates, and build your own at the builder with plain text standing in for anything a graphic would otherwise carry alone.