Recruiters and ATS tools scan the skills section of your internship CV in seconds. If your layout is cluttered or uses uncommon terms, you might be filtered out before a human even sees your name. For Saudi students applying to cooperative training or summer internships, a clean table-style list with clear categories often performs better than long paragraphs. By mirroring the language of the job posting – especially English terms popular in the Saudi market like “data analysis” or “project management” – you raise your match score instantly.
Group hard skills and soft skills under separate subheadings. Hard skills might include “Microsoft Excel, Python, financial modelling” while soft skills could list “teamwork, time management, Arabic-English bilingual communication.” Recruiters from companies like Aramco or SABIC look for exactly this clarity. Keep the list scannable by aligning each skill on its own line and avoiding full sentences. ATS software parses bullet points or plain lists more reliably than a paragraph.
When applying with an Arabic CV, format the section similarly. Use right‑to‑left alignment and separate clusters with clear Arabic labels like “المهارات التقنية” and “المهارات الشخصية”. Many local platforms still process Arabic text, but the scanning logic remains the same: the clearer the grouping, the faster the system identifies relevant words. The CV Builder on cv.thejundi.com lets you toggle between Arabic and English templates while keeping the skill structure intact, which saves time for bilingual applications.
Order the most important skills first. Study three to five internship announcements in your field, highlight repeated keywords, and place them at the top. For example, a marketing intern might lead with “content creation, social media management, Google Analytics” before softer attributes. This front-loading technique not only catches the recruiter’s eye during a 6-second scan but also gives the ATS a higher density of target terms early in the document.
Avoid decorative icons or vertical columns that confuse older ATS systems. A single-column layout with simple punctuation such as commas or vertical bars between skills remains the safest choice. If you’re using the CV Builder, its default ATS-optimized template automatically formats the list this way, so you can focus on choosing the right words instead of worrying about technical compatibility.
Add a “Tools & Technologies” line if you’re in engineering, IT, or finance. Saudi employers often search for tool names like “MATLAB, AutoCAD, Power BI, SAP” directly. Place that line immediately after hard skills so the ATS catches it early. When you apply in English, keep the tool names in their original form because recruiters type exactly those keywords into the search bar of their applicant tracking system.
Finally, tailor the section for every application. A generic list may pass ATS but won’t convince a recruiter. Before submitting through Bayt, LinkedIn, or a company portal, reorder and prune the skills to match the job description exactly. Small adjustments – replacing “teamwork” with “cross-functional collaboration” if the posting uses that phrase – can dramatically increase your callback rate. The goal is to make both the machine and the human reader feel that you wrote your CV just for that role.