Base resumes and job-tailored resumes
Your master copy, the per-application copies made by scanning, and why scanning never changes the original.
A base resume is your master copy, the one you start from. A job-tailored resume is a copy attached to a specific job scan, edited to match that job description, so you can keep one per application without touching your master.
That is the whole model, and everything below is a consequence of it.
Image coming soon
Scanning copies, it never edits
When you scan a job from a resume, we duplicate the resume first and attach the duplicate to the scan. Every section, every setting, every styling choice is copied across.
Your base resume is read during that process and never written to, so nothing you do inside a scan, including AI edits, can reach it.
The copy is named after the job it was made for, in the form My Resume - Product Manager @ Acme.
Telling them apart
On your resume list, each card carries one badge in the top right:
- Base, in green. Your master copies.
- Job-Tailored, in blue. Copies attached to a scan.
- Classic, in orange. Older plain text resumes, covered at the bottom of this article.
Above the list is a Filter by type: row with a count against each type. It opens on Base, so job-tailored copies stay hidden until you ask for them. That is deliberate, because 20 applications in, most of the list is copies and the master you actually edit gets hard to find.
Inside the editor, the badge next to the resume name says Base Resume or Job-Tailored.
What is different inside the editor
The delete row is the one to read twice. Deleting a job-tailored resume deletes the scan it belongs to, and the match data goes with it, which is why the confirmation names the scan rather than the resume.
Making a tailored copy
From a base resume, open the Job Match tab, paste or import the job, then press Scan.
You land on the tailored copy with its match report already open, and your base resume is still sitting in your list, unchanged.
Getting back to your base resume
A tailored copy is self contained once it exists, so it does not carry a link back to the resume it came from.
The route back is Back to Scans, then your resume list, where the Base filter is already selected for you.
How many you can have
The free plan allows 1 base resume. Job-tailored copies are not counted against that, so a free account can scan repeatedly from its one master copy.
The limit is checked before an upload is read, so hitting it costs you nothing but the click. Creating a second base resume shows Upgrade to create another base resume.
Classic resumes
If you have been here a while you may have resumes stored as plain text rather than as sections. Those show a Classic badge, and the editor is covered by an overlay with a single button, Convert to Smart Resume.
Converting runs your text through the same parser an upload uses and takes 10 to 30 seconds. It creates a new structured resume alongside the original, which is left exactly as it was.
Converting is what unlocks the section level work. Scoring runs check by check across your sections and DOCX export is built section by section, so both need structure rather than a block of text. The original still counts against your base resume limit, so on the free plan you may want to remove it once the converted copy looks right.