How to build a resume with this builder
With your dates and job titles to hand, a first resume takes about half an hour. Work through the sections in the order they print:
- Start: the first visit opens a sample resume for a fictional operations manager. Select Start blank to clear it. If sample text is still there when you export, the tool asks first.
- Header: full name, a headline (usually the job you want), email, phone, and city and country; a street address is left off by default. Labelled links such as LinkedIn or a portfolio print without the https:// part.
- Summary: two to four lines on what you do best and what you want next. Starting out, you can title it Objective instead.
- Experience: newest role first, with company, title, location, start and end month (or Present) and three to six bullets. Wrap a phrase in **double asterisks** to print it in bold.
- Education: institution, degree, field, location and dates, with an optional grade or GPA and a line for honours or coursework.
- Skills: named groups, each a comma-separated list. Proficiency ratings are off by default.
- Anything else that helps: projects, certifications, languages, volunteer work, awards, publications, interests, references or a custom section. Any section can be hidden, renamed or moved; any entry duplicated, moved or deleted, with undo.
- Tailor it with Job description match, clear what you can in Content checks, pick a design, then export.
On a phone, an Edit and Preview switch sits at the top and a download bar stays fixed to the bottom of the screen.
What recruiters read first on a resume
A first pass through applications is quick. The reader looks for who you are, what you do now, where and for how long, and whether that matches the job. Those facts belong in the top third of page one, which is why every template prints your name, headline and contact line first, then the summary, then your latest role.
Put the title you are applying for in the headline, in the employer’s words where it is true: “Operations Manager”, not “Operations Professional”. It sits directly under your name.
A summary describes what you already offer; an objective describes what you want. Most people with work history should write a summary. An objective still suits a school leaver, a graduate or a career changer, where the goal explains the rest of the page.
Below that, the reader scans titles and employers on the left and dates on the right. The builder keeps dates right-aligned on the title line, printed as “Jan 2024”, “01/2024” or “2024”.
How to make a resume ATS-friendly
An applicant tracking system (ATS) is the software employers use to receive applications: Workday, Greenhouse, Lever, iCIMS, Oracle Taleo and SAP SuccessFactors are common examples. It parses your file into fields such as name, job titles, employers, dates and skills, stores them, and lets recruiters search and sort candidates. Some systems can order applicants against the job, but it is normally a person who reads the result and decides. Treat claims that a fixed share of resumes are “rejected by the ATS” with caution; no one outside an employer can see how its system is set up.
What you control is whether the software reads your resume correctly. These choices parse reliably:
- One column. Classic, Modern and Compact read top to bottom in a single column, which is why the builder starts with one of them.
- Real text. The PDF and the Word file both contain selectable text, not pictures of text.
- Familiar headings such as Experience, Education and Skills. You can rename sections, but a standard name is easier to recognise.
- Contact details in the body of the page, not in a header or footer area some parsers skip.
- No text boxes, icons in place of words, or layout tables. The Word export uses none of them.
The Sidebar template is labelled in the tool as “less safe for older ATS parsers”. Its PDF reads section by section rather than across both columns, and its Word file uses one two-cell table, but a single column is still the safer choice for a large portal.
Send PDF or Word as the portal asks; with no preference stated, a PDF keeps your layout exactly. Job description match is a word match to help you tailor, not an ATS score. For more on parsing and file types, read our ATS guide.
Resume templates and when to use each
The four templates hold the same content, so you can switch at any time without retyping.
- Classic: centred header and thin rules between sections. Suits almost any application, including law, finance and the public sector.
- Modern: a coloured accent bar down the left and bold sans-serif headings. Suits most private-sector roles.
- Compact: tighter spacing so a long career fits on fewer pages without tiny text.
- Sidebar: a narrow left column for contact details, skills and languages beside the main column. Good for a resume emailed to a person or handed over at an interview; less safe for older ATS parsers.
Pick an accent colour from the presets or your own; the tool keeps the choice dark enough for text to stay readable. Text is set in Inter, with Source Serif 4 as a serif option, and font size, line spacing, section spacing and margins each have a control.
Fit to one page tightens section spacing, then margins, then line spacing, and text size last, until the resume fits. If it cannot without going below a readable size, it says so: cut content rather than shrink it. Paper defaults to A4 or US Letter from your browser’s locale.
Resume sections explained: what to write in each
Summary: name the role, your strongest area with evidence, and what you want next. “Operations manager with eight years in warehouse and last-mile logistics. Cut late deliveries by a third across two sites. Looking for a regional role.”
Experience: each bullet is a verb, the scope and a measurable result. “Responsible for scheduling” becomes “Rebuilt the shift rota for 40 staff, cutting overtime by 12% in six months.” The Bullet helper asks “What did you do, how was it measured, what changed?” and offers editable patterns for ten role families: sales, engineering, operations, care, retail, hospitality, admin, teaching, finance and trades.
Education: above Experience if you are a student, a recent graduate or the job requires a named qualification; below it otherwise. Skills: group them, for example “Tools: SAP, Excel, Power BI”, and name the important ones in your bullets too.
- Projects: for students, career changers and technical roles; what you built and what it achieved.
- Certifications and licences: issuer and year, plus expiry if it must be current.
- Languages: CEFR levels from A1 to C2, or plain words such as “native” and “fluent”.
- Volunteer work, awards, publications and interests: when they show a skill the job needs.
Some details do more harm than good. The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says employers “should not ask for a photograph of an applicant” before an offer (https://www.eeoc.gov/prohibited-employment-policiespractices). UK government guidance says employers can ask for a date of birth only if the job has a minimum age, and must not ask whether candidates are married (https://www.gov.uk/employer-preventing-discrimination/recruitment). The National Careers Service advises leaving out your age, date of birth, marital status and nationality, and writing that references are available on request rather than printing someone else’s contact details (https://nationalcareers.service.gov.uk/careers-advice/cv-sections). So the photo is off by default, the street address is left off, and References offers that one line. For worked examples, read how to write a resume.
Resume vs CV: regional conventions
In the United States and Canada a resume is a short summary of your work, and a CV is a long academic record. In the UK, Ireland, Europe, Australia and many other countries, “CV” is the everyday word for the short document. This builder makes that document, whichever name your market uses.
- Length: one page early in a career, two with more experience; more is rare outside academia. The content checks flag more than one page with under about ten years of experience, and anything over two.
- Paper: A4 almost everywhere, US Letter in the US and Canada. Change it under Design when applying abroad.
- Photo: usually left off in the US and UK. In parts of continental Europe a photo is still common, and the EU’s Europass site suggests adding a professional photograph (https://europass.europa.eu/en/create-europass-cv). Follow the advert and local practice.
- Dates: “Jan 2024” reads everywhere; “01/2024” avoids month names; “2024” alone hides short gaps but can look evasive for a recent role.
Tailoring a resume to a job description
Tailoring rarely means rewriting everything: usually a new headline, a summary that names the role, the most relevant bullets moved up, and the advert’s own names for skills and tools you have.
Paste the advert into Job description match. On your device, the tool picks out likely skill and tool terms and shows which already appear in your resume and which do not. Add a missing one you really have with “add to skills”, or better, in a bullet that shows you using it. Mirror exact phrases where honest: if the advert says “stakeholder management”, use that rather than “managing stakeholders”, since both people and software search for the phrase.
Do not paste keywords in white or tiny text; parsers read hidden text like any other, and it can surface in the recruiter’s view. Do not claim skills you lack, or repeat a term in every bullet.
The advert is kept for the session unless you save it with that version. Keep one version per application with New or Duplicate, so you know what each employer received.
Resume download formats: PDF, Word and plain text
- PDF: for email and most portals. Selectable text, embedded fonts, title and author set to your name, no watermark or site branding, named like Firstname-Lastname-Resume.pdf. Print uses the same PDF.
- Word (.docx): when a portal or agency asks for Word. Real Heading 1 and Heading 2 styles, real bullet lists, no text boxes, your margins and paper size, set in Calibri or, for the serif option, Georgia.
- Plain text and Copy to clipboard: for “paste your resume” boxes. Headings in capitals, one bullet per line starting with “-”, dates on the title line.
- JSON: a full backup in the tool’s own format.
- JSON Resume: the open schema, version 1.0.0 (https://jsonresume.org/schema), for import from and export to other tools.
The PDF fonts cover Latin, Latin Extended (including Vietnamese), Cyrillic and Greek. Arabic, Hebrew, Indic scripts, Chinese, Japanese and Korean are not supported in the PDF, and the content checks list any character that would print blank. The Word file uses the reader’s own fonts.
Cover letter builder: a letter that matches your resume
Each resume version has a Cover letter tab. It reuses your name, contact line, template and accent colour, so the two look like a pair. Add the recipient’s name and title, company and address, date, greeting, body, closing and signature name. It has its own page count and exports. Keep it to one page; the placeholders suggest four paragraphs:
- Opening: the role, and the one reason you fit it.
- Evidence: one or two achievements that match the advert, with numbers.
- Why this company: something specific to this employer, not praise that fits anywhere.
- Close with an ask: you would welcome an interview, and how to reach you.
A cover letter still matters when the advert asks for one, when you are changing field or explaining a gap, after a referral, and at small employers where one person reads every application.
Where your resume data is stored
Everything runs in your browser. Your text, design settings and each version with its cover letter are saved to local storage on this device as you type. A pasted job advert is kept only for the visit, unless you choose to keep it with that version. There is no account, no upload and no AI service: the PDF and Word files are built on your device.
So the data lives only here. Another browser or device starts empty, and clearing site data or using a private window removes it. Export all downloads one file with every version; importing that file on another device restores them. Delete a version with undo, or use “Delete all my data”, which asks you to confirm first.
This is general guidance on writing a resume and cover letter. Hiring practices, and what employers expect to see, vary by employer, industry and country. Using this tool does not guarantee an interview or a job offer.