By Cara Siera
Whether you’re an anxious student, a recent grad, or an experienced career person hitting up job boards and looking for a change, you’ve probably seen how much internet chatter surrounds the topic of resumes. Resumes are important, but what tips and suggestions should you use, and which should you avoid?
Professionally designed online resume builders can be a good solution to help you sort the good advice from the mediocre. With tried and tested templates, artificial intelligence (AI) guidance, and human experts to fall back on, the following resume builders will give your career the jumpstart it needs.
1. ResumeGiants
ResumeGiants is our all-around top pick for an online resume builder. You can start from scratch or import an existing resume (even your LinkedIn profile!) to auto-fill some sections, giving you a head start.
ResumeGiants offers more than 20 templates to choose from, all of which have proven successful in the real world. Most templates allow for font and color scheme customization, resulting in more than 500 distinct resume styles.
Building your resume is easy—prompts will walk you through adding your information, and then do the formatting for you. If you get stuck or need some inspiration, you can access AI-generated phrases tailored to the position. You can also request an in-depth resume review and receive tailored feedback within 48 hours.
When you’re done, you can download your resume as a single-page digital PDF, print-ready multi-page PDF, or a plain text document. The best part is, you can create and download your resume for free!
2. Zety
Zety is a favorite among first-time resume writers. Like ResumeGiants, you can start a new resume or upload an existing one to improve it, using one of more than 20 templates. You can also make a matching cover letter.
The platform is intuitive and easy to use with a “fill in the blanks” interface. Instead of AI coaching, Zety has “thousands of top-rated phrases” that you can insert directly into your resume.
You can try out Zety for free, but you’ll have to invest in a paid subscription in order to download it. If you just need a quick resume, you can get a 14-day trial for $1.95. If you’re anticipating a lengthy job search, you can pay $25.95 every four weeks, or get an annual plan for $71.40 (just $5.95 per month).
The one issue I noticed while trying out Zety was that the website seems to eat up a lot of bandwidth—other open tabs were noticeably slowed, and the browser even froze up a few times while logging in or using the website.
3. Rezi
Rezi boasts that it is the “smartest AI resume builder” and that it “does more than any other resume builder.” The resumes produced on Rezi are estimated to have an interview rate of 62.18 percent—which is considerably higher than the average rate of about 3 percent, according to Eval Community. It leans heavily on AI enhancement.
With Rezi’s free plan, you can create one resume with a three-download limit. To unlock features like cover and resignation letter builders, resume scoring, AI keyword targeting, real-time content analysis, unlimited downloads, and additional file formats, you’ll need a paid subscription. You can go Pro for $29 per month or get a Lifetime membership for one payment of $149. All subscriptions have a 30-day guarantee.
4. Canva
Canva is one of my favorite resume builders because of its flexibility. No, it won’t prompt you to input your text or offer AI suggestions, but you can replace the filler text with your own information. Choose from thousands of colorful, creative templates and enjoy full creative control.
Lots of Canva’s resume templates are available for free. You will notice, however, that many require a Canva Pro subscription to unlock. Others may contain paid elements that must be deleted or purchased in order to download your creation. You can unlock Pro features for $120 per year, or enjoy a 30-day free trial.
5. You
“You” isn’t the name of a website or program—here, “you” means you. We’ve included it here to remind you that your—the human element, your personality, and your unique experiences—are a vital part of the resume writing process. You are one of the top five resume builders—even with a tool to help, the resume wouldn’t get written without you. And, without you, there wouldn’t be anything to write a resume about.
So, don’t forget that your input is important. Even if you incorporate AI suggestions or prewritten content, edit it to ensure that it is both accurate and unique to you.
Key Takeaways
Resume builders with AI tools for students and professionals can make the tedious chore of writing your resume a breeze. Whether you decide to use ResumeGiants, Zety, Rezi, Canva, or one of the other myriad services available today, remember that you are the key element to building a resume that wins the attention of your hiring manager.
