Career
Resume, cover letter and salary tools.
About career
Job-hunting tools covering the documents and decisions the process demands: building a resume that survives automated screening, drafting a cover letter, estimating a salary, and preparing for interviews.
The resume builder is shaped around applicant tracking systems, which is the constraint most people underestimate. A large share of applications at medium and large companies are parsed by software before a person reads them, and ATS parsers are not sophisticated. They fail on multi-column layouts by reading straight across and interleaving unrelated text. They fail on text inside images and on unusual section headings. They frequently fail on tables. The template here is deliberately plain, single-column and conventionally headed, because a design that impresses a human is worthless if it never reaches one.
Two things reliably improve a resume more than formatting. First, replace responsibilities with outcomes: 'responsible for the reporting pipeline' says nothing, while 'rebuilt the reporting pipeline, cutting month-end close from four days to six hours' says everything. Numbers do disproportionate work. Second, mirror the language of the specific posting โ if it says 'stakeholder management' and your resume says 'client liaison', both a keyword filter and a hurried human may miss the match.
On salary figures: treat any single estimate as one data point. Real compensation varies enormously by city, company size, industry and negotiating position, and published ranges lag the market. Triangulate across several sources before anchoring yourself to a number in a conversation.
Frequently asked questions
What makes a resume ATS-friendly?
A single-column layout, standard section headings such as Experience and Education, real selectable text rather than text inside images, and no critical information locked inside tables or headers. Multi-column designs are the most common failure, because parsers read across the page and interleave unrelated content.
Should my resume be one page or two?
One page for early career, up to two once you have roughly a decade of relevant experience. Beyond two, the marginal page is rarely read. Cut oldest and least relevant material first โ nobody needs the detail of a role from fifteen years ago.
Do I need a different cover letter for every application?
The specific parts, yes โ why this company and why this role. Those are exactly the sentences that make it worth reading, and a generic letter is often worse than none. The structure and your own background can be reused; only the targeting needs rewriting each time.
How accurate are salary estimates?
Directionally useful, precisely unreliable. Compensation varies widely by location, company size, industry and individual negotiation, and public data lags the market. Use several sources to establish a range rather than treating one figure as the answer.