Building a Resume by Hand — The CV Composer
The CV Composer is the free, non-AI route to a Resume. You pick what goes in, and Kandid.pro assembles the document from your Career Profile exactly as you selected it.
No AI, no credits. Assembly happens on the server and is entirely deterministic — the same selections always produce the same document. Nothing here spends an AI credit, on any plan.
You will find it in two places:
- Documents → Add Resume — a standalone Resume, not tied to an application.
- Inside a job application — the manually built Resume is linked to that application.
Both open the same screen.
How the screen works
One screen, not a wizard. The picker sits on the left, the assembled Resume on the right, and the preview redraws as you tick. There are no steps, no Back/Next, and no review page — the preview is the review.
| Element | Where it is |
|---|---|
| Page title | "Build a Resume" — the noun follows your terminology setting, so it reads "Build a CV" if that is what you use |
| Profile selector | Top right. The primary profile is marked "· Primary". If you only have one profile, it is selected for you |
| Section picker | Left column — every section, each expanding to its items |
| Live preview | Right column on larger screens. On smaller screens a Preview button opens it full-screen |
| Create | "Create Resume". A warning appears if you have not ticked anything |
| Cancel | Returns you to wherever you came from |
Choosing what goes in
Personal details
Always the first row, and it cannot be moved. It has its own checkbox, so you can leave your contact block off if you are pasting the Resume somewhere that already has it.
Body sections
- Professional summary
- Career highlights
- Core competencies
- Technical skills
- Work experience
- Qualifications
- Certifications
Each body section has up and down controls. The order you set is the order the document is built in — move Qualifications above Work experience for an academic application, and the preview redraws to match.
Picking individual items
Every section expands to show its items, and work experience expands one level further — open a role to tick its individual activities. This is how you build a targeted Resume: keep the role, drop the achievements that have nothing to do with the job you are applying for.
Two behaviours worth knowing:
- Select all / deselect all sits above the item list and acts on the items. The section's own checkbox is in its header — the two are separate controls.
- Ticking an item turns its section on for you. You never have to enable the section first. While a section is off, its item checkboxes read as unticked.
Deselecting everything means nothing, not everything. If you untick every item in a section, that section contributes nothing to the document. Earlier versions quietly handed the whole list back when you unticked the last item — that no longer happens.
Sections you cannot see
A section backed by a list with no entries is hidden, because it could not change the document. Fill that part of your Career Profile and the section appears.
Core competencies is currently empty for everyone — the editor for it exists, but nothing in the app writes to it yet. Expect that section to be missing.
Writing a different summary for one Resume
The Professional summary section has an inline override box. Type into it and this Resume uses your text, while your Career Profile keeps its own summary untouched. Useful when one application needs a sharper opening line and you do not want that wording following you everywhere.
Presets
Save a selection by name and apply it to the next Resume you build.
- Save the current selection under any name you like.
- Apply a saved preset to restore that whole selection.
- Delete presets you no longer use.
- Saving under an existing name overwrites it.
- You can keep up to 10.
Presets are the fastest way to run several tracks at once — one for the roles you are chasing on capability, one for the ones you are chasing on domain experience.
Starting from nothing
At the bottom of the page: "Would rather start from nothing and type it yourself?"
That creates an empty Resume with placeholder structure and no Career Profile required, fully editable straight after creation. It is an escape hatch rather than the main path — a Resume built from your profile starts far closer to finished.
After you create it
The document opens in the editor. Version numbers are assigned by the server, so you do not need to name or number anything yourself. From there you can edit it, run a quality check, set it as the primary document for an application, and export to DOCX or PDF — see the Documents guide.