CV Maker - Build, Improve, Tailor, and Export Your CV

CV Maker is the full CV workspace built on top of preparAItor's CV parsing. Parsing turns an uploaded PDF into structured profile data; CV Maker uses that data so you can design, improve, tailor, translate, and export a polished CV.

Where to Find It

Click CV Builder in the main navigation. You land on the CV Builder overview, which has two tabs:

• CV Storage — your saved CVs. Pick one to open it in the editor, upload a new PDF, or create a CV from scratch.
• Generated CVs — temporary AI versions created by Tailor and Translate (more on these below).

Opening a CV takes you to the editor. In the editor header, the Your CVs dropdown lets you switch between CVs and also offers Upload new CV, Start blank CV, and Rename current CV. A save indicator next to it shows Saving / Saved — your edits are saved automatically.

CV Parsing vs. CV Maker

These are related, but not the same:

• CV parsing: Upload a PDF CV and the AI extracts contact details, summary, experience, education, skills, languages, and projects into structured fields. A new upload costs 15 credits.
• CV Maker: Edit that structured data and turn it into a designed CV with templates, fonts, colours, AI actions, and PDF export. Editing is free — credits are only used by the AI actions listed below.

You don't have to start from an upload: Start blank CV asks how you want to begin — with an empty CV or with one of the example CVs described next.

Start From an Example CV

Whenever you create a CV from scratch — Start blank CV in the editor header, or Create CV from scratch during CV selection — a chooser asks "How do you want to start?":

• Start empty — a blank CV you fill in yourself.
• One of 15 example CVs, grouped by sector:
  • Commercial & finance — commercial employee (EFZ), fiduciary and accounting specialist, customer service agent.
  • Technology & marketing — software engineer, digital marketing specialist.
  • Healthcare & social — registered nurse (HF), childcare specialist (FaBe).
  • Trades & construction — electrician (EFZ), site manager.
  • Retail, hospitality & logistics — retail specialist (EFZ), restaurant service, logistics specialist (EFZ), facility management team lead.
  • Career stage — university graduate looking for a first job, returning to work after a family break.

Each example is built around what actually matters in that profession: licences and safety certificates for the trades, project budgets for a site manager, shift work and certifications for a nurse, seasonal positions framed positively in hospitality, and internships and a thesis for a graduate with no career history yet.

Picking an example fills the editor with a complete, realistic CV in your interface language (German, English, French, or Italian): summary, work experience, education, skills, and more. All example content is fictional — it shows you how a strong CV is structured and phrased, and you replace it with your own details as you go.

Example CVs are free: no upload, no parsing, no credits. The new CV counts toward your CV storage limit like any other, and every editor feature — templates, AI actions, PDF export — works on it normally.

The Four Editor Tabs

The editor is organised into four tabs: Build, Health, AI Versions, and Export.

Build — content, layout, and design

The Build tab is where you edit content and design side by side. Switch between Edit (form fields) and Preview (rendered pages with zoom, fit, and page navigation).

• Section cards: drag a section by its handle to reorder it, use the eye icon to Show / Hide it (hiding keeps the data), and open Display options on a card to change how that section renders — skill style (chips, dots, bars, list), language style and level display, list styles, contact style, and so on. On two-column templates, each card also has a Move to sidebar / Move to main column control. Your personal details stay pinned at the top.
• Add a section: add any built-in section you removed (work experience, education, the three skill sections, languages, certifications, hobbies, references, testimonials, websites, and more), or add custom blocks — Text block, List, Descriptive list, and Page break. Custom blocks and page breaks each have their own maximum, shown in the menu when you reach it.
• Settings panel: pick your Template, Layout (1 or 2 columns), Colour, and Font, and adjust Density, Margins, Date format, and the CV language (titles) for section headings. Higher plans unlock further groups — custom colours, typography, page header & footer, and sidebar controls (see plan differences below).

For a full walkthrough of every layout and design control, see CV layout and design.

There are 13 templates, from ATS Classic (recruiter-software-friendly, one or two columns) through Modern Sidebar and Compact Elegant to designs like Hero Band, Timeline Classic, Editorial Magazine, Bento Grid, and Mono Terminal.

Add a profile photo

In the Build tab, the Profile photo control accepts JPG, PNG, or WebP up to 2 MB. Click Upload (or Replace), then drag the preview to adjust the crop; Center photo resets it. The Show photo on CV switch hides the photo without deleting it, and Photo border with Border thickness adds an optional frame. The photo appears only in templates with a photo slot.

Health — AI health check (15 credits)

The Health tab runs a CV Health Check: AI scores your CV against ATS and recruiter best practices. Click Analyse (the button shows the credit cost) and after about 30 seconds you get:

• An overall CV Health score out of 100, plus Section scores
• Strengths, Weaknesses, and Top suggestions telling you what to fix first
• A Keyword profile with dominant themes, strongest keywords, weak or generic terms, and possible missing keywords

If you edit the CV afterwards, the report is marked Outdated — click Re-analyse (another 15 credits) to refresh it.

AI Improve — rewrite a single field (3 credits)

Text fields such as your summary and experience descriptions have an AI improve button. One click returns three rewrite variants — Concise, Impactful, and ATS-optimised — each with a character-count comparison. Pick one with Use this, tweak the wording if you like, then Apply, or Discard all. The 3 credits are charged per click, whether or not you keep a variant.

AI Versions — Tailor (60 credits) and Translate (90 credits)

The AI Versions tab ("Tailor & Translate") creates temporary AI versions of the CV you have open:

• Tailor for a job: click Choose job, then select a saved job or add a new posting (parsing a newly added job costs 10 job-parsing credits separately). Confirm with Tailor with AI — the AI rewrites your CV for that job, computes a before/after match score, and lists every proposed change. Takes around 30 seconds.
• Translate: click Choose language and pick German, English, French, or Italian. Dates, company names, and technologies stay verbatim.

Both run in the background and appear under Generated CVs when ready.

Export — download the PDF (free)

The Export tab shows Export to PDF with a summary of your chosen template and font. Click Download PDF — unsaved changes are saved first, and the file downloads via a temporary link (it isn't stored in Generated CVs, so export again whenever you need a fresh copy). PDF export costs no credits. On the Free plan the PDF is watermarked; Pro and Premium export watermark-free.

Working with Generated CVs

Tailor and Translate never overwrite your CV. Their results are temporary versions in Generated CVs (reachable from the AI Versions tab or the overview). Each entry shows what it was based on, a match score for tailored versions, and an expiry date — versions follow your generation-history retention setting, so save anything you want to keep. For each ready version you can:

• Review changes → Choose parts to apply: accept edits change by change. Additions are pre-selected; replacements and recommendations are off by default. Use Take all or pick individually, then Apply — you can undo for 30 seconds afterwards.
• Save to storage: either Save as new CV (counts toward your CV storage limit) or Replace existing CV (overwrites a CV you pick; storage count stays the same).
• Keep for later — leave it in Generated CVs until it expires.
• Delete — remove the version; your saved CVs are unaffected.

Credit Costs at a Glance

• CV Health Check: 15 credits per analysis
• AI Improve: 3 credits per click (three variants)
• Tailor for a job: 60 credits (plus 10 if you add and parse a new job)
• Translate: 90 credits
• PDF export: free

All AI actions are available on every plan, including Free — they draw from your monthly credit pool.

Plan Differences

Editing and PDF export work on every plan; design depth increases by tier:

• Free: 3 templates, 4 fonts, 5 colour palettes; exported PDFs carry a watermark.
• Pro: all 13 templates, all 21 fonts, all 26 colour palettes, plus Custom colours (your own accent, text, and sidebar colours).
• Premium: everything in Pro plus Typography controls (heading case, line spacing, section spacing), Page header & footer controls (continuation headers on pages 2+, page numbers, name/email in the footer), and advanced layout controls (sidebar width, how many pages keep the sidebar, section width and flow on two-column templates).

Locked settings stay visible in the Settings panel with a note about what upgrading unlocks, so you can see what you'd get.

What CV Maker Is Not

CV Maker is not the same as custom Word templates. Custom Word templates are a Premium feature for generated motivational letters — you upload a .docx layout the generator fills in. CV Maker templates control the design of the CV itself. See custom templates.

The CV Maker export is also separate from the generated application package: CV Maker prepares the CV, while the Generator creates the motivational letter, application email, interview Q&A, job summary, and job posting archive.

Recommended Workflow

1. Upload your existing CV as PDF (or Start blank CV — empty or prefilled from an example CV).
2. Review the parsed content in the Build tab and fix anything the AI misread.
3. Pick a template, colour, and font in the Settings panel; add a Profile photo if your template supports it.
4. Run the Health check to spot weak areas, then use AI improve on the flagged fields.
5. For an important application, Tailor for a job, review the changes in Generated CVs, and apply only what you want.
6. Open Export and click Download PDF.
7. Continue to job details and generate the full application package.

Next Steps

• Add job details
• Generate application documents
• Understand the credit system