Make a resume on your iPhone

With Hirova

Typing a whole resume on a phone keyboard is slow, and the hard part is not the layout but the wording. Hirova is a resume builder app for iPhone that takes that on: you answer a few questions, by typing or dictating, and it sets your answers as resume bullets and typesets the PDF.

1. Import or start fresh. Bring in a PDF or a photo of your resume. Hirova reads it on your iPhone; the file is not uploaded.
2. Answer a few questions. Three to five short questions about what you owned and what changed. Type or dictate, and skip any you like.
3. See your words set as bullets. Hirova rewrites your answers as resume lines in a consistent voice.
4. Check every fact. Each title, date and number shows the words it came from. Nothing reaches your draft until you confirm it.
5. Export a PDF. A typeset, text-based PDF you can send from the share sheet.

Your first resume is free, including the PDF in the Minimal design. Pro adds a tailored version for each job, a cover letter for each and three more designs. Hirova Pro is $19.99 a month or $79.99 a year in the US. The App Store shows your local price before you buy. Hirova is for iPhone and is coming to the App Store.

With Apple Pages

Pages is Apple’s free word processor and includes resume templates. It suits you if you already know what to write and want control over the layout.

1. Open Pages and tap Choose a Template.
2. Scroll to the resume templates and tap one. A single-column design with plain section headings is the safest choice for application forms.
3. Tap each placeholder and type over it. Delete sections you don’t need.
4. To make a PDF, tap the More button in the toolbar, tap Export, then PDF.

Apple’s guides: use templates in Pages on iPhone and export to PDF.

Writing on a small screen

• Dictate first, edit second. Say what you did out loud with the keyboard’s microphone, then tidy the text. Spoken answers tend to be more specific than typed ones.
• Draft bullets in Notes. Get the words right before you fight a template.
• Check it as a page. Open the exported PDF and zoom out. Stray line breaks and a second page with one line on it are easy to miss while editing.
• Have it read back. With Speak Selection on, iPhone reads selected text aloud, which catches missing words.

Sending it

1. Name the file well. FirstName-LastName-Resume.pdf, not Document 3.pdf.
2. Save it to Files. From the share sheet, tap Save to Files, so every app can find it.
3. Upload from Files. When an application form in Safari asks for a resume, tap the upload button and choose Browse to pick the PDF.
4. Email it as an attachment. In Mail, tap the attachment button above the keyboard to add the file, and write two lines in the body.

Before you send, try selecting text in the PDF. If you can, application software and screen readers can read it too.