Take the Hassle Out of Creating Resumes with CV Maker

One of the things that I tend to spend way too much time on when I apply for a job is my resume. It seems like there are so many different schools of thought when it comes to preparing one for yourself. I have been told before that you should stick to it being one page long, and then I recently learned in a school admin course that it doesn’t matter how long it is and the more pages the better. In fact the professor, who is a superintendent of a school district, showed us his and it was five pages long! Needless to say, I am in need of updating mine, and so I decided to take a gander to see what was out on the web for me to try.

As I started to look around for ways to create one, I wanted a simple and easy way to get my information down on paper and yet have it be professional enough that I could use it in a job application. When I got the opportunity to play around with CV Maker, it seemed to meet the simplicity and ease of use factor, but was it enough for me? Let’s take a look.

Getting Started

One of the first things that I appreciated about CV Maker was the fact that when I got to their site, I could start creating my own resume right away. There was no hassle to create an account or log in; that could be done later if I wanted to. I wish more sites were like this, as I hate getting bogged down with having to go through a tedious sign up process where you have to put down all your info. Then you have to wait till they send you an email so that you can confirm you are who you say you are.

If you decide to sign up for an account, they make this process as painless as possible. All you have to do is enter in your email and a password that you want and you are good to go. You also have the option of signing up with Facebook if you want to. Again, they give you the least amount of friction possible to getting into what you really want to do: making a resume.

Creating  and Previewing Your Resume

CV Maker takes the same approach that they do with their sign up in their resume maker. When you first start out to fill out the different fields, you are given six different ones to fill. You can list your basic information, education, work experience, qualifications, interests, and references. For each field, you are given a set of boxes to fill out and a short description telling you what you should ideally put in that box. If you want to add more than the fields that are given to you, you can add a box where you can put in any information that you want. The different fields can be rearranged so that you have them in the order that you want in your resume.

When you are done entering all the information that you want, the last thing you need to do is choose a style for your resume. There are five different styles to choose from and each one adds its own distinct flare. Although these are great, I would love to see more added in the future, maybe as a paid feature.

Sharing Your Resume

There are a couple of different ways that you can share your resume with others. The first way is that you can save it and download it to your computer so that you can print it out to bring to a job interview. When you do this, you can choose to download it in three different formats, PDF, HTML, and a TXT file. Secondly, you can also share your resume electronically, by choosing to share it on the web. CV Maker gives you a unique url that you can share with potential jobs that you are looking at applying for. In the url is your resume in the style that you chose, along with Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ buttons, and well as a share button with a variety of different sharing sites.

Is It Too Simple?

As I played around with CV Maker, I was at odds with myself, because I definitely loved the simplicity of it and how easy it was to create an resume. For someone who hates to have to create one, this really took the pain and angst out of it. On the other hand, there was a small part of me that thought that this was maybe a little too simplistic for me. A part of me wanted a little more control over my resume than what I was given. For example, I wanted to change fonts in certain areas and their size and I couldn’t. Also, although the different styles were nice, I wanted to be able to more control over how I wanted my resume to be displayed.

Conclusion

Despite my little nuances, I have to say from an overall perspective, I really liked using CV Maker. I personally think it is perfect for those that are looking for an easy way to get a professional looking resume without having the hassle of worrying about all the different things that should be in one. This basically takes care of everything for you, all you have to do is put in information that you already know and it makes it look good.

CV Maker is free to use and they also have a web app in the Chrome Web Store, which is basically the same thing that I mentioned above. If you are looking for an easy, simple way to create a resume and don’t need a whole lot of control over how it looks, then you have to go and give CV Maker a spin. You can’t go wrong with it and it will produce a clean, good looking resume for you.