Exporting your resume
Word, PDF, plain text or JSON - which to send where, and why what you see in the preview is exactly what comes out. All free, with no watermark.
The Download button (or ⌘E) opens a dialog with four formats. Every one is free, has no watermark and no download limit, and is built in your browser. The right one depends on who is receiving it.
| Format | Send it when |
|---|---|
| Word (.docx) | Applying through a company careers portal. The dialog recommends it there. |
| Sending it to a person - a recruiter, a hiring manager, a referral. It looks the same on their screen as on yours. | |
| Plain text (.txt) | Pasting into a form field that mangles formatting. |
| JSON | Keeping a backup. It is the whole document in JSON Resume form, hidden lines included, and it imports back into this builder. |
The dialog remembers the format you chose last time and selects it again.
The preview is not an approximation#
What you see in the builder is drawn from the same model the exporter uses, and it draws real pages
- not a scaled-down impression of them.
PDF#
The format for a person. The text is real text - selectable, and extractable by a parser - not an image of text, which is what breaks the ATS check most often.
Word (.docx)#
The format for a careers portal, and for anyone who asks for Word. Two things to expect:
- Word may re-flow it slightly. A different machine with different fonts can shift a line.
- It is editable, and recruitment agencies sometimes do edit it - stripping your contact details before passing it to a client. That is normal in that market and a reason to keep your own copy.
Check the DOCX before sending it if the layout matters.
Plain text#
No formatting at all. Its use is narrow but real: application forms with a "paste your resume" box that destroy anything richer.
Naming the file#
The filename is the first thing a recruiter sees in a folder of two hundred.
The builder names the file from your name and the resume's label, and the dialog shows the name
before you download. So label the resume for the role: Priya-Sharma-Backend-Engineer.pdf beats
resume.pdf, which is unfindable the moment it is downloaded.
Keep what you sent#
Export it and keep the file. That version is what you will be interviewed against; the resume in the builder will have moved on.
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