Other Résumé Builders We’ve Tested
Adobe Express: Adobe Express is powerful, with a ton of customization options and easily the boldest, most unique résumé designs I’ve seen. Shame it doesn’t work. The résumé builder crashed for me five times when trying to design my CV in Chrome—on one of the most high-end PCs money can buy, mind you—and I eventually gave up and moved to Firefox. I was able to get my résumé built on Mozilla’s browser, but I still had to slog through the most clunky interface of any of the résumé builders I tested. Adobe Express isn’t just for building résumés. It’s a complete online design tool, not dissimilar from Canva, but that level of power in your browser (combined with an onslaught of pop-ups asking you to pay) slows everything down considerably. Adobe Express is a good alternative to Canva, and in many ways, it’s even better. But that doesn’t matter much if the web app struggles to stay afloat.
Canva: Online design suite Canva has a résumé builder, and while you can throw together a CV, it’s just not built for job searching in quite the same way as the rest of our picks. Canva is ultimately a design tool, and its résumé builder fits into that mold. You’ll have to individually drag all the elements of your CV around to line them up properly, and play a game of whack-a-mole between free and paid assets available through the web interface. There are some striking résumé designs, but I don’t know how well they’d translate when actually applying for jobs. If you already have a Canva subscription, you can accomplish a lot if you’re diligent with formatting everything correctly. For everyone else, a proper résumé builder is not only simpler, but it’ll also spit out a better result once you’re done.
Indeed Resume Builder: Indeed has a résumé builder that came highly recommended as I started researching, but I’m not sure why. It’s serviceable and easy to use, with step-by-step instructions for filling out your work history, education, and skills. But it’s less of a résumé builder and more of a tool to build your Indeed profile. That’s a perfectly fine purpose, but you can’t take your résumé outside the Indeed ecosystem. You don’t design a résumé on Indeed. Instead, if you haven’t already uploaded a résumé and added it to your account, you can add all of the information you’d normally have on a résumé to your profile. Then, you can use that to easily apply to jobs on Indeed. It works, and Indeed is certainly a massive platform for finding a job. For most folks, however, I’d recommend building a résumé with another tool and uploading it to Indeed instead.
Teal: This résumé builder is paired with job-search and tracking tools, which include a job board and an AI job-search function. It also provides features that might be handy when it comes time to consider offers, such as an offer analysis tool and compensation tracker. A Chrome extension is available, too, to make it easier to tag jobs. However, I felt that the core résumé building tools were unremarkable and that Teal is generally focused on managing your job search overall. While you can get started for free, you’ll really want a subscription, which is priced at $179 yearly or $29 per month. Teal offers a weekly price at $13, which might be handy if you just want to pop in, build your résumé, check the job board, and then move on.
Kickresume: In addition to résumés, Kickresume provides tools for cover letters (which many competitors offer) plus resignation letters and websites (which are less common). That can make it a good one-stop shop. Kickresume also has a Career Map tool, which helps you visualize the types of jobs you might be suited for based on your résumé and preferences. This could become a top pick in time, but at this moment, I feel that, much like Teal, the core résumé builder has no particular edge on the competition. Most features require a subscription, which is priced at $24 a month or $96 a year.
LinkedIn: Unsurprisingly, the career-focused social network has the option to export your LinkedIn profile as a PDF, which can be used as a résumé. However, it’s an extremely barebones tool that converts your existing profile to a basic PDF with no options to alter the content before export. So, while this is technically a way to build a résumé, I would never recommend it.
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