The Problem
Every job wants a slightly different resume. Nobody has time to write one.
The advice is always the same: tailor your resume to the listing. In practice that means rereading a job description, guessing what the recruiter cares about, and rewriting bullets at eleven at night for a role you may never hear back from. So most people send the same resume everywhere.
The AI tools that promise to fix this mostly make it worse. They pad your experience with skills you never had, invent numbers, and export decorated PDFs that application portals cannot read. A resume that gets you an interview you cannot back up is worse than no resume at all.
The Approach
One master resume. A tailored version per job. Nothing invented.
Shortlist starts from your real resume, imported once from a PDF, a photo or pasted text. Paste a job listing and it shows the requirements one by one, met or missing, each with the line of your resume that proves it. The score is a number you can argue with.
Then it writes the version for that job: reordered and reworded to match the listing, never expanded. Every change is shown as a diff you can keep or reject. If something is missing, Shortlist asks you whether it is true, and only then adds it, to the master, so the next job starts from a better resume.
How it works
Four steps, in order
- 01
Import your resume
PDF, LinkedIn export, a photo of a printout, or pasted text. Shortlist sorts it into sections and checks it the way a recruiter would: dates, numbers, gaps, contact details.
- 02
Paste the job
A link, the text, or screenshots of the listing. You get a match score out of 100 and a requirements list with verbatim evidence from your own resume.
- 03
Review the changes
The tailored version is a diff: aligned to this job, tightened wording. Keep the original on any line. Undo everything with one tap.
- 04
Export a real PDF
Five layouts, one page or two by the country's convention, Letter or A4. Real text underneath, so portals parse it. Word export too, and a cover letter in the same letterhead.
What Makes It Different
Built around one rule: it cannot make things up
Evidence for Every Score
Each requirement is met, partial or missing, with the exact line from your resume that shows it. No black-box percentage.
Nothing Invented
A validator rejects new numbers, new employers, changed dates and unevidenced skills before you ever see the draft. Missing something? It asks you.
Portal-Safe PDFs
Real text layers, standard headings, single-column defaults. Tested against text extraction on every layout.
One Master, Many Jobs
Your master resume is the single source of truth. Every tailored version is a snapshot of it, flagged when the master moves on.
Cover Letter With Receipts
A letter per job, every claim tied to a line in your resume or the listing, in four letterhead styles that match the resume.
No Account
Your resume lives on your phone. Text is sent to the AI only when you ask for a score, a draft or a letter, and is never kept.
Who it's for
For people who already have a resume and are applying now
- Three to fifteen years in, applying to a handful of roles that each want a different emphasis
- People who have been burned by a resume tool that invented a skill and got asked about it in the interview
- Anyone whose resume disappears into application portals and wants to know whether the PDF is even readable
- Applicants moving between countries who do not know whether it should be one page or two, Letter or A4
Coming soon to the App Store
Shortlist is in TestFlight. Get in touch if you'd like early access.