5 Free Resume Apps to Maximize the Chances of Hiring Managers Reading Your CV

To get a job, you need to get an interview. And to get an interview, you need a resume. These free apps will help job applicants make a professional CV or resume that catches the eye of recruiters and hiring managers anywhere.

These aren’t the typical free CV apps to create resumes with a template of questions to answer. Some of these apps will help you create a digital CV, which looks great to present to hiring managers. Others will ensure your resume has the right keywords that the recruiter is looking for. And if you’re out of your depth or have a question, there’s even a forum to get help from others.

1. Persona (Web): Free Digital Resume to Impress Recruiters

Persona is the free modern CV that every candidate is looking for. It’s your own digital portfolio with all salient details. It perfectly blends the old-school resume with modern design and needs, helping you present a better case for hiring yourself.

You will need a standard CV to use Persona. When you create a profile, add your contact details and upload that resume. Then the app asks you to record three videos, like introduction, your experience, and your future. For people who are better at speaking than writing, this is a fantastic way to connect with potential recruiters and let them get to know you better.

Persona also places an emphasis on future plans. You need to talk about your interests, like where you’d like to work, what roles and industries you’re looking for, and how actively you’re seeking new jobs. These tags help employers zero in on you and paint you as a potential long-term hire.

The app is completely free and requires no technical expertise. When you’re shooting the videos, make sure you use a good camera (like your phone) and that you shoot in landscape mode (widescreen). It’ll help you look more professional, and phone cameras are generally much better quality than webcams.

2. Get In Touch (Web): Digital Cover Letter for Social Job Hunting

You see people asking for job leads on Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks. You need to stand out in this crowd. Recruiters recommend having a good cover letter to go with your CV so that the hiring manager has a brief idea about who you are before diving in. Get In Touch is a digital cover letter for job hunting on social media.

Sign up with your Google or Facebook account, add a photo, and a brief update about your most recent job post. Use the “Tell us about yourself” box to lay out a solid case for yourself. Remember, this isn’t a space to rehash your resume.

If you’re unsure of what to say, check out Big Interview’s three-step formula on how to answer that question and what to avoid.

Then add links to your work and upload your CV. Get In Touch makes a professional landing page for your job hunt, which you can then post on social media. Your friends can then safely re-share it without having to answer questions from their followers as anyone can click the link, find out a bit about you, and download the full resume if need be.

3. Freesumes Examples (Web): Sample CVs for Every Job Type

You can get templates easily on the internet, but how do you know what works and what you should really write? One way is to check out what a job-landing resume looks like. You can find a collection of these CV samples at Freesumes, a repository of free resume templates.

Freesumes creates a collection of best-looking, filled up resume examples for all types of job positions: manager, internship, teacher, executive, sales, customer service, etc. Click any to see what you should and shouldn’t include in it, and what a recruiter is looking for in that role. For example, references are more important in an internship while past experience is more important for managerial roles.

The entire Freesumes examples page offers several other tips on how to write CVs that will get a hiring manager to notice you. Once you’ve gone through that and found the right sample for your CV, browse the collection of free templates on the website to match your skills.

4. Skillsyncer (Web): Compare Job Posting to Resume for Greater Success

In case you didn’t know, recruiters often use computers to scan your resumes. You often need to pass the applicant tracking system (ATS) to have your CV read by a human. And then the human has their own checklist in their head which they scan your resume for, often only looking at it for less than ten seconds. There is so little time to make an impression, so Skillsyncer ensures your CV has the right words to make it pop out.

The app asks you to add the job posting and your resume, and then compares them both. It will generate a job match report where you need to get your score above 80 to get noticed.

There are five categories the app tests: hard skills, soft skills, job title, educational qualifications, and other keywords.

For each category, you’ll see side-by-side numbers for how many times the job posting mentioned a word that’s in your resume. It highlights which keywords are entirely missing, so you can add them. The app even creates graphs, but those seem merely ornamental.

Finally, Skillsyncer also scans other elements of your resume to ensure they are filled, like the ideal word count, formatting, personal details, etc. These might seem like small things, but recruiters appreciate an overall refined package with attention to detail.

The free version of Skillsyncer allows for one comparison per week, and misses a few features like word choice, pronoun usage, etc. Nonetheless, it’s a fantastic product that covers all the basics.

5. r/Resume (Web): Resume Help From Real People

Apps aren’t going to give you the back-and-forth help that a real human will. The subreddit r/Resume has a community of people giving advice and feedback on resumes.

After you create a resume or a cover letter, create a new post, and ask for advice. The more specific you are, the better the advice will be. There are posts where random Redditors have stepped forward to completely rewrite someone’s CV and made it better.

Remember to update your resume and repost it in the same thread, don’t create new posts each time. It’s a faux pas that makes the community mad or gets your post deleted.

Keep in mind, these are people on the internet, not experts. They’re well-meaning and helpful, but if some advice doesn’t make sense to you, you don’t have to take it on board.

The Cheat Sheet of Resume Essentials

It’s best if you use a combination of the above free resume apps to create your own. You need advice from Reddit, samples to create the CV, Skillsyncer to test it, and a digital page to host it.

No matter which app you use, you need to know some of the basics about what to do and what to avoid. That’s why we have a quick cheat sheet on the essential tips for writing a winning resume or CV.

Read the full article: 5 Free Resume Apps to Maximize the Chances of Hiring Managers Reading Your CV

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