Profile or resume: what's the difference

FirstResume keeps one profile and any number of resumes. Add a promotion to your profile and the resume you built last month stays as it was. The profile feeds new documents and leaves finished ones alone.

What your profile holds

Profile in the sidebar opens your master career record: contact details, industry, summary, experience, education, projects, certifications, skills and languages, with a second tab for the kind of work you want. Nothing in it is written for one employer. Put in the internship you would mention to some employers and not others, the language you half speak, the project that never shipped. FirstResume reads the profile whenever it writes a resume or an application for you, so a thin profile gives thin results.

What a resume is

Resumes live under Resume in the sidebar, in a table titled Resume Builder. Each has its own content, template, font and margins, and you can keep as many as you like: a general one, one per application, one in another language.

The two records do not sync. Editing a resume leaves the profile alone, and editing the profile leaves your built resumes alone. When something changes, put it in the profile first so it is there next time, then open the resumes you still send and add it there too.

Tailoring makes a copy

Inside an application you pick a base resume and FirstResume tailors a copy of it to that posting. The resume you picked is untouched. The copy joins the table with the job title under Tailored For and an Open chip back to the application; a resume that belongs to no job shows a dash there.

One resume in the table carries a blue Primary star. That is your default for a quick download and the first suggestion when you pick a base resume: What a primary resume is.

Tips

• If you already have a CV, let it fill the profile for you: Edit your profile or update it from a CV.
• A resume can leave things out. The profile should not.