CV Maker

How to use the CV Maker

1. Start with the sample if you want to see the shape first. Load sample fills the form with a fictional example so you can see how each section renders. Replace every line with your own facts before downloading anything — sending the sample as your CV would be sending someone else's invented history.
2. Work top to bottom. Personal details, then summary, then experience, then education, then skills and languages. You can leave any section empty; empty sections are left out of the preview and the PDF rather than printed as blank headings.
3. Keep dates honest and consistent. Use month and year for every role and course. If a role is current, leave the end date blank and the preview shows “Present”. A gap is not a problem to hide with stretched dates: a reader who finds a stretched date trusts nothing else on the page.
4. Write the summary last, even though it prints first. Two to four sentences are enough: what you do, how long you have done it, and one thing you are genuinely known for. If you cannot say it in four sentences, you do not yet know what the summary should say.
5. Reorder sections for the role. A recent graduate may want education above experience; an experienced worker usually wants experience first. Use the section-order buttons, then check the preview again — order changes emphasis, and emphasis is a choice, not a decoration.
6. Download, then read the PDF as a stranger would. Open the PDF, check every date, name and spelling, and check that nothing overflowed or wrapped oddly. The PDF is A4 with 15 mm margins and selectable text, so it can also be copied into an application form if a portal asks for plain text.

Worked example

The fictional sample describes Jordan Example, a customer service assistant. The summary is three sentences about shop-floor service. Experience lists two roles: a current role at Fictional Mart Ltd from March 2022, and an earlier part-time role ending February 2022. Because entries sort most recent first, the current role prints first even though it was entered first in the form — sorting is by date, not by entry order. Education is a single certificate from 2020–2021. Languages are English at C1 and Spanish at A2, using the CEFR scale from A1 to C2. The PDF for this sample fits on one A4 page at the default sizes, with the name, role and contact line at the top, then sections in the order shown in the section-order list. If you add a long work history, the PDF paginates automatically and keeps the same margins on every page.

What this tool does, and what it deliberately does not

This tool is a formatter. It takes your facts and arranges them in a readable, consistent document. It does not write your CV for you, does not suggest jobs or employers, does not check whether a qualification is real, and does not improve a weak history by dressing it up. Any tool that claims to do those things is either guessing or asking you to trust a stranger with your career history.

On format: the layout is Europass-style in the sense that it follows the same section logic — personal details, summary, experience in reverse chronological order, education, skills, a CEFR language grid and digital skills — but it is our own implementation in our own code and words. It is not affiliated with Europass, it carries no Europass branding, and an employer who specifically requires a document produced by the official Europass editor should be given exactly that, not this page's output. For most private-sector applications, a clean single-column CV with selectable text is the safer choice anyway: it parses reliably in application systems, prints identically everywhere, and contains nothing a reader has to decode.

On honesty: the page states plainly that nothing here is uploaded. That is a privacy feature and a limit at once. Because nothing leaves your browser, there is no account to recover a CV from, no cloud copy, and no support team who can retrieve a draft you cleared. Keep your own copy of the downloaded PDF and, if you want an editable original, keep the plain-text version too.

Common errors, and the limits of this tool

The commonest error is copying the sample's shape but not its discipline: long duty lists that repeat the job title, skills that are really personality claims (“hard worker”, “team player”) with no evidence, and language levels chosen by optimism. A reader believes a skill when the experience section proves it. If the proof is not there, cut the claim.

The second error is the photo decision made by default. Some countries and employers expect a photo; others, notably in the United States and the United Kingdom, prefer none, and a photo can introduce bias into a process that should judge the work. This tool leaves the choice to you and defaults to no photo in the preview until you tick the box — a deliberate friction, so the decision is made rather than inherited.

The limits are straightforward. The PDF uses standard PDF fonts so the text stays selectable in every reader; characters outside the Latin-1 range are replaced with a question mark in the PDF, so if your name or a qualification uses a script outside that range, check the PDF before sending it and use the plain-text version where the script matters. The tool is English-only at launch: form labels, section headings and the PDF are all in English. It does not check spelling, does not tailor a CV to a job description, and does not store versions — one draft per browser, overwritten on each save.

Frequently asked questions