Getting started with Workplacea: your first resume in 20 minutes

Getting started with Workplacea takes about twenty minutes: pick a starting point, fill in or fix your content, read your score, and export a clean PDF. This guide walks the whole path in order, using the exact buttons and screens you'll see, so you always know what happens next and why.

What Workplacea is (and what we deliberately don't do)

Workplacea is a resume editor with a deterministic score and AI assistance that shows its work. Three principles shape everything you'll notice:

• Every AI edit appears as a visible diff you accept or dismiss. Nothing is applied silently.
• The AI never invents facts. If a rewrite needs a number you didn't provide, it shows an [ADD METRIC] placeholder or asks you an evidence question instead of making one up.
• The useful work is free. You can build and tailor resumes, use every AI tool, see your full score, and export your first clean, watermark-free PDF without paying or handing over a card.

A few things are deliberately not here yet: cover letters, DOCX export, a Chrome extension, and mobile apps are not yet available. When an article touches one of those, we say so plainly.

Do you need an account?

No. You can use the editor as a guest, and everything saves to your browser's local storage. That's real persistence — close the tab and come back, and your work is there — but it lives only on that device.

Signing in syncs your resumes to the cloud so they follow you across devices. When you sign in, any drafts you made as a guest are moved into your account automatically; you'll see a small confirmation like "1 local draft moved to your account". There is no enforced cap on free resumes or tailored variants, and the full score and AI tools are always available. If a paid plan later ends, your saved content remains yours to open and edit; a downgrade never deletes or locks your resumes. The details are itemized in the free plan explainer.

Step 1: pick a starting point

1. Open the dashboard and select "+ New resume".
2. Choose one of three cards:
   • "Start from scratch" — a blank resume with the standard sections ready to fill in.
   • "Try the sample" — a filled-in resume, useful for exploring the editor and scoring before committing your own content.
   • "Upload existing" — import a PDF or Word resume. The file is parsed once, never stored, and you review everything side by side before it becomes editable. Full details are in the import guide.

If you're unsure, start with the sample. Poking at a finished resume teaches the editor faster than a blank page does.

Step 2: a short tour of the editor

The editor is a split view: a structured form on the left, a live preview on the right. The preview is print-true — what you see is exactly what the PDF will look like, because both are rendered from the same layout.

The pieces worth knowing on day one:

• Sections. Summary, experience, education, skills, projects, and certifications, plus custom sections. You can reorder them and hide individual bullets.
• Rewrite. Each bullet has a Rewrite menu with three modes: Improve, Shorten, and Add metrics. Any of them returns up to three variants shown as word-level diffs — additions and deletions marked, with a one-line explanation of why. Accept with a click (or Cmd+Enter), try again, or dismiss (Esc). Undo covers your last 20 steps (Cmd+Z).
• Evidence questions. If you ask for "Add metrics" and the bullet contains no numbers, the AI asks you for the fact — "How many people were on the team?" — rather than inventing one.
• The score chip. Your 0–100 score is always visible. Open the score drawer for category bars, plain-language pass/fail checks, and the next three fixes, each linking to the exact bullet it refers to.
• Tailor. Paste a job description and review a ranked queue of suggested edits one at a time, then use "Save as variant" to keep a job-specific copy without touching your base resume.
• Templates. Twelve role-aware layouts are available to preview, with accent colors, three spacing options, and Letter or A4 paper. Standard, Meridian, and Carbon are the three free core templates; the other nine are premium designs. Every template keeps a single-column semantic document order, with real text and familiar section headings.

Step 3: read your first score

The score runs from 0 to 100 across four categories: Content, Match, Format, and Completeness. Match only activates once a job description is attached; until then the other three carry the score. The rubric is published and deterministic — the same resume always gets the same number, and every point is traceable to a named check. There's no black box to appease.

Don't chase 100 on day one. Open the score drawer and work the "next 3 fixes" list; those are ranked by estimated point gain, so they're the fastest route upward. The full rubric is documented in your resume score explained.

Step 4: tailor to your first job posting

1. Open the Tailor drawer ("Tailor to a job").
2. Paste the job description and select "Analyze". Workplacea extracts the skills and responsibilities the posting asks for.
3. Review the keyword chips — green means already on your resume, amber means missing.
4. Select "Tailor resume" to get a ranked queue of suggested edits, each shown as a diff with a one-line reason. Apply or Skip each one.
5. Select "Save as variant" to keep this version linked to your base resume.

Anything the AI couldn't honestly work in is listed separately, with a note to add those keywords only if they reflect real experience.

Step 5: export

Select Export PDF. The review shows the chosen template, paper size, score, privacy notes, and whether that export is included before the secure download begins. Your first clean PDF from Standard, Meridian, or Carbon is free. Choose Download my free PDF and the server returns a selectable-text file with no watermark.

If you later want another clean export or one of the nine premium templates, Pro costs $12 per month and includes unlimited clean exports, while Career Sprint costs $39 once for 90 days of the same template and export access with no automatic renewal. An interrupted delivery gets a short exact-document retry window, and ending a paid plan does not remove the resume content you already created. The export guide covers naming and troubleshooting.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need to pay to download my resume?

Not for your first finished resume. The free plan includes one clean, watermark-free PDF from a core template, with the same selectable text and score visibility as a paid export. Pro or Career Sprint is required for repeated clean exports and premium-template exports; there is no enforced cap on the number of resumes or tailored variants you can create and edit.

Will the AI write my resume for me?

It rewrites what you give it. It sharpens verbs, tightens phrasing, and suggests where a metric would help, but it won't fabricate experience, numbers, or employers. Where evidence is missing, it asks you for it.

What happens to my guest drafts if I sign in later?

They move into your account automatically the first time you sign in, and you'll see a confirmation message. Nothing is lost or duplicated.

Can I try the scoring without building a resume first?

Yes. The free checker scores any pasted resume against the same published rubric, entirely in your browser, with no account. See how to use the free ATS resume checker.

Ready when you are

Open the editor and pick a starting point, or run your current resume through the free checker first to see where you stand. If anything in this guide doesn't match what you see on screen, email contact@workplacea.com and we'll fix the guide or the product.