ATS-friendly CV reformatting, done in a minute.

What we mean by “reformat”

Most CV problems aren’t about content — you have the experience; recruiters often can’t see it. Reformatting addresses three failure modes at once: (1) the file structure is unparseable by automated screeners, (2) the language is buried in long paragraphs or weak verbs, and (3) the summary block (if any) reads as boilerplate rather than tailored to the role.

PerfectCV doesn’t add or invent. We extract every employer, role, date, qualification, certification, language, and skill from your existing CV; rewrite each bullet to be sharper and more concrete; generate a fresh 3–5 bullet executive summary in third person; cap skills at the eighteen most relevant; and render the result through a single-column ATS-safe Word template with standard fonts.

What we don’t do: invent metrics that aren’t in your source, claim leadership you didn’t describe, add work rights or salary expectations, score or rank you against other candidates, or use first-person language (“I” / “my” / “me”) anywhere on the page.

How it works (under the hood)

Stage one: pre-payment validation. The moment you upload, we extract the raw text from your PDF or DOCX. If the result is under 600 characters — typical of a scanned image or an unparseable export — we reject the upload before charging you. No payment is ever taken on a CV we can’t process.

Stage two: structured extraction. After payment, the AI parses your text into a strict JSON schema covering candidate details, target role, employment history, education, certifications, languages, additional information, and quality flags. The schema is validated; if the AI returns invalid JSON we retry once with the validation error in the prompt; if it still fails, the order auto-refunds.

Stage three: rewrite and summary. A second AI pass rewrites bullets to be more concrete, generates a tailored executive summary, and standardises dates and section headings. British English is enforced throughout. Banned clichés (“passionate”, “results-driven”, “synergy”, “dynamic”, “team player”, “hard-working”, “detail-oriented”) are blocked at the prompt level so they never appear.

Stage four: hallucination cross-check. A separate, cheaper AI pass (Claude Haiku) reads the rewritten output side by side with your original source. Every employer, job title, qualification, certification, and numeric claim must trace to the source. Anything that doesn’t is either rejected (the order fails and refunds) or flagged.

Stage five: render. The verified JSON populates a Word template via merge fields. Empty sections are omitted (no empty headings). The DOCX uploads to private storage; you get an email with a download link valid for seven days.

What an ATS-safe CV actually means

Applicant tracking systems are dumb HTML / XML parsers. They strip styling, ignore most layout, and try to map runs of text to fields like “Work experience”, “Education”, “Skills”. CVs that confuse them — multi-column layouts, text boxes, embedded tables for layout, images, headers and footers — routinely have whole sections vanish, get mis-assigned, or surface in the wrong field.

Every PerfectCV template is single-column, uses standard typography (Calibri, Arial, or Times equivalents), avoids tables for layout, has no images, and uses real headings rather than visual styling. The result lands cleanly in major ATS engines (Workday, Greenhouse, Lever, Taleo, iCIMS, BambooHR, SmartRecruiters) without parsing errors.

We do not promise rankings or scores against specific roles — every ATS is configured differently by the employer. What we do promise is that your content will appear in the fields it should appear in, instead of dropping out.

Pricing and what’s included

£2 one-off, no subscription. The price covers parsing your source, the full AI pipeline (extract → rewrite → summary → verify), the Word document render, and email delivery. Stripe Tax handles UK VAT correctly at checkout.

Optional add-on at checkout: cover letter (+£2). It uses your reformatted CV plus any job description you paste, and ships as a separate Word document tailored to the role. Same hallucination rules apply — no invented company facts or skills.

Auto-refund on pipeline failure. If extraction returns invalid JSON twice, if hallucination guardrails trip, or if the render fails, your payment is refunded automatically and you receive an email about it. No refund form, no support ticket.

Privacy and retention

Your source CV and the generated Word document are stored in a private bucket and automatically deleted seven days after delivery. Unpaid abandoned uploads are purged after twenty-four hours. We never sell or share your data.

The AI vendor (Anthropic) operates under a training opt-out for paid usage, so your CV text isn’t used to train future models. Sub-processors are listed in our privacy policy.

We log order IDs and pipeline events for debugging and operational monitoring; we do not log full CV text, extracted personal data, or email addresses outside our transactional email vendor.

Who PerfectCV isn’t for

If you have no existing document to upload, this page isn’t the right door — but PerfectCV does still cover you. The CV builder walks you through a blank CV in six guided steps, with the design filling in live as you type, and it’s free to build and preview; the same £2 applies only at download. Start there instead of typing a rough draft into Word first.

If you need PDF output rather than a Word document, that’s on the v1.1 roadmap. For now we ship DOCX only — you can export to PDF in one click from Word, Pages, or Google Docs. We chose DOCX as the v1.0 output because it’s the format recruiters most commonly request when applying through ATS systems; PDF is a viewing format, DOCX is a working format.

If you’re a recruiter or agency wanting bulk processing or a private template library, this product isn’t shaped for you. A multi-tenant tier may arrive later but is explicitly out of scope today. Get in touch if you have agency-specific needs and we’ll let you know when there’s a tier that fits.