The resume you write is the resume a machine reads

Often, and in a way you cannot see on the page. We measured it: the same 36 resumes laid out in one column and with a sidebar, each PDF read back the two ways parsers read text. One column came through both intact. With a sidebar, reading line by line across the page glued the columns together and broke about half the bullets, and reading in the order the file stores its text lost the name whenever the sidebar came first. Which way an employer's system reads, it does not say. Single-column text is the only layout that survived both, which is why this tool only makes that kind — and you can check any file you already have, without an account.

The measurement, and its limits

Use DOCX when the application form accepts it and says nothing about format, and PDF when you are attaching to an email or the form asks for one. DOCX reads most reliably through older application systems, because the text and the headings are already structured rather than having to be recovered from a page layout. PDF preserves exactly what you laid out, which matters once a human opens it. This builder gives you both, plus plain text, so the choice is never a re-export.

Most of the time, no — not on their own. The common setup is that the system parses your file into fields, scores or filters against criteria a recruiter configured, and shows a ranked list to a person who decides. Some employers do set hard knockout questions, usually about work authorisation or a licence, and those are answered on the form rather than in the resume. The part you control is whether the file parses cleanly into the fields, which is the part this tool measures.

Use the ones that are true of you, in the sentences where they are true. Matching the posting's own vocabulary helps, because a recruiter searching the system searches for the words in their own posting — but a list of terms pasted at the bottom of a resume is visible to the person reading it and reads exactly as it is. The match report here shows which requirements from a posting your resume already evidences and which it does not, so the gap is something you decide about rather than something you pad.

One page if you have under about ten years of relevant experience, two if you have more and the second page earns itself. The rule people repeat as universal came from an era of paper stacks, and a strong second page is not held against you; a thin one is. What genuinely costs you is a page of filler, or cutting real evidence to force a fit. The preview here is the actual PDF, so the page count you see is the page count a recruiter gets.

A photo and a logo can, because an image contains no text — anything you put inside one is invisible to a parser, and in several countries a photo also creates a bias problem a recruiter may be instructed to avoid. Colour is fine as long as the text is still readable in grey: it is the contrast that matters, not the hue. The templates here use colour on headings and rules and never put information inside an image.

No. The builder works signed out, and PDF, Word, plain text and JSON Resume all download for nothing, with no watermark and no step at the end where the download stops being free. Without an account your resume is written to storage inside your own browser and stays there. An account is optional; it adds syncing between devices, and deleting it removes every resume immediately with no copy kept.

Your name, the role, and nothing else — the way a recruiter's downloads folder wants it, because that folder is where the file ends up next to forty others called resume.pdf. It is a courtesy to the person reading it rather than something an applicant tracking system searches on. This tool names every export that way by default.