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Get the CV on your letterhead without doing it yourself

A CV lands in the candidate folder and comes back in your template — your branding, contact details stripped, dates and job titles made consistent. What took half an hour of copy-paste takes about a minute of reading it over.

Start freeSee how it works

Priya Raman — Senior Backend Engineer

raman-cv-v3.docx

What she sent

  • PRIYA RAMAN
  • priya.raman@— · 07700 900xxx
  • 42 Alder Road, Bristol
  • Objective: seeking a challenging role…
  • Sept 2021 – now: Sr Engineer, Kestrel
  • 2018-21 · Backend Dev @ Molloy Ltd
  • Skills: Go, Postgres, k8s, AWS, Redis…

What goes to the client

  • [Your agency letterhead]
  • Candidate reference: PR-4471
  • Senior Backend Engineer · Bristol
  • Available: 4 weeks' notice
  • Sep 2021 – Present — Senior Engineer
  • Mar 2018 – Aug 2021 — Backend Developer
  • Core: Go · PostgreSQL · Kubernetes · AWS

Contact details out, reference number in, dates in one format. Nothing about her changed.

Works with

  • Google Drive
  • Google Docs
  • Dropbox
  • Gmail
  • Greenhouse
  • Lever

It watches the folder you already drop CVs into. Greenhouse and Lever can take the finished document back as an attachment — Ashby can't, because it has no file upload, so on Ashby the formatted CV stays in Drive.

The chore

How this goes right now

  1. A CV comes in as a .docx with the candidate's own formatting — a two-column layout that breaks the moment you touch it, dates written four different ways, a photo, and an objective statement from 2014. It is a good candidate and a bad document.

  2. So somebody opens the agency template and starts copy-pasting. Strip the phone number and the email so the client can't go direct. Fix the dates. Kill the photo. Make the job titles line up. Put the reference number in. Twenty-five minutes if the layout behaves, forty if it doesn't, and it goes wrong most reliably at half past six when you're trying to get three CVs out before the client's morning.

  3. And the person doing it is usually the person who should be on the phone. That's the actual cost — not the half hour, but the half hour spent by someone whose time is supposed to be spent billing.

The difference

Same document, made client-ready, without the copy-paste

Reformatting by hand
Reformatting as it lands
25–40 minutes per submission, done by your most expensive person
A drafted document about a minute after the CV hits the folder
Candidate layouts that break as soon as you edit them
Your template, your letterhead, every time
Contact details occasionally left in by accident
Contact details stripped as a rule, not as a habit
Dates and job titles inconsistent across a shortlist
One date format and one title style across the whole shortlist
Rushed at half six, so the worst ones go out on the worst days
You read it over instead of rebuilding it

Try it

Walk through it yourself

This is the actual shape of the workflow — the same trigger, the same steps, the same draft waiting for your say-so. Click through it.

Format CVs to your template

TriggerGoogle Drive

CV dropped into the candidate folder

raman-cv-v3.docx lands in the Wexley Group shortlist folder. Picked up as soon as the file appears — this one is a genuine file-created event, not a scheduled sweep.

What it does

  1. Read the CV that just landed

    Two-column .docx, 3 pages, photo top-right, dates written four different ways, mobile and personal email in the header.

    Google Drive

  2. Copy your agency template and pour the content in

    Your letterhead, your section order. Nine roles across eleven years mapped into the template's employment history block.

    Google Docs

  3. Apply the house rules

    Contact details removed, photo dropped, reference PR-4471 inserted, all dates normalised to MMM YYYY, objective statement cut.

    Google Docs

  4. File it against the candidate and flag what needs a human

    Saved to Priya's folder as a new version. Two gaps flagged — 2017 unexplained, and the Molloy end date conflicts with her LinkedIn-stated dates on the original.

    Google Drive

Draft document — nothing has been sent

Priya Raman — Senior Backend Engineer — PR-4471

Prepared for
Wexley Group
Available
4 weeks' notice
Source file
raman-cv-v3.docx
Applied automatically
  • Contact details removed — mobile, personal email and home address stripped from the header.
  • Photograph removed.
  • Dates normalised to MMM YYYY throughout. Nine roles, previously in four formats.
  • Candidate reference PR-4471 inserted in the header block.
  • 2014 objective statement removed; profile paragraph kept and left unedited.
Flagged for you
  • Gap between Aug 2017 and Mar 2018 with no explanation on the CV. Left as-is — worth a question before you sub her.
  • Molloy Ltd end date reads Aug 2021 in the employment section and Sept 2021 in her summary. Kept the employment-section date and flagged the conflict rather than picking one silently.
Deliberately not touched
  • Nothing was added, reworded or improved. Her descriptions of her own work are exactly as she wrote them.
  • No skills inferred, no seniority relabelled, no achievements rephrased.

Save this to Priya's folder and mark it ready to sub?

It's a normal Google Doc — open it and change anything. Most consultants tweak the profile paragraph for the specific client and leave the rest. The two flags are the bit worth reading before it goes anywhere.

Once you approveGoogle Drive

Filed against the candidate, ready to send

Saved into Priya's folder as a new version alongside the original, which is never modified. If you're on Greenhouse or Lever it can also go back as an attachment on her record — and the email to the client is yours to write and send.

Half an hour of copy-paste, gone.

You read it over and send it. The candidate’s own words stay theirs.

Start free

How it works

What it's actually doing

Built around a folder, because that's a habit consultants already have. This one is genuinely event-driven — Drive publishes a real file-created trigger.

  1. 1
    • Google Drive
    • DrDropbox
    • Gmail

    Watches the folder you already use

    Drag a CV in the way you do now, or forward it to one address. No new app, no upload screen.

  2. 2
    • Google Drive
    • GoGoogle Docs

    Rebuilds rather than converts

    Two-column layouts, tables, PDFs, text boxes. Content comes out and goes into your template, so nothing broken carries over.

  3. 3
    • GoGoogle Docs

    Applies your house rules

    What gets stripped, section order, date format, where the reference sits, which clients need full anonymising. Set once.

  4. 4
    • Google Drive
    • GrGreenhouse
    • LeLever

    Files it and flags what it noticed

    Saved as a new version — the original is untouched. Gaps and date conflicts surface rather than getting smoothed over.

You stay in control

It reformats. It never rewrites what the candidate said about themselves.

The line that matters on this page: formatting is presentation, and changing a candidate's account of their own experience is something else entirely. It moves content into your template and strips what your house rules say to strip. It does not improve, embellish, or reword.

  1. Step one

    It drafts

  2. Step two — you

    You read it and approve

  3. Step three

    Only then does it send

Nothing is sent to anyone

The output is a document in a folder. Subbing the candidate is you, writing the email, in your own words, when you're ready.

It doesn't rewrite the candidate's words

Job descriptions, achievements and the profile paragraph come across as written. If a CV undersells someone, that's a conversation with the candidate — not something to fix quietly on a document going to a client with your logo on it.

Gaps get flagged, never filled

An unexplained year is surfaced for you to ask about. It won't smooth a gap by widening date ranges, and it won't drop a short role to make a history look tidier.

The original is never modified

The formatted version is saved alongside it. If a client ever queries something, the document the candidate actually sent you is still there, unchanged.

Setup

What setting this up involves

  1. 1

    Connect

    • Google Drive or Dropbox — wherever CVs already land
    • Google Docs, holding your agency template
    • Gmail or Outlook, if CVs arrive as email attachments
    • Greenhouse or Lever, only if you want the finished CV attached to the record
  2. 2

    Tell it how you work

    • Your template — the actual document, with your letterhead and section order
    • What gets stripped: contact details always, photos usually, referees sometimes
    • Your reference number format, and where it sits
    • Which clients need full anonymisation rather than contact-details-only
    • Your date format, so a shortlist reads consistently
  3. 3

    Then it runs

    About 30 minutes, once

    Most of that is uploading your template and saying what gets removed. Once it matches a couple of CVs you'd have done by hand, it matches all of them.

Edge cases

Where it's careful, and what it won't do

What it handles

  • Layouts built from text boxes and tables

    The ones that break the instant you edit them. It rebuilds into your template, so nothing broken carries through.

  • Dates written four different ways

    "2021-now", "Sept 21", "09/2021" all become one format — the difference between an agency and a forwarding service.

  • Contact details hidden in the document

    Headers, footers, document properties. One client going direct costs you the fee, so it checks where people forget.

  • Sections that contradict each other

    Two end dates that disagree get flagged, not silently resolved. Better you spot it than the client.

What it does not do

  • Screen, score or rank anybody

    A document task. Suitability and shortlisting stay with you — and we're not going to build that.

  • Rewrite the candidate's words

    No strengthened bullets, no inferred skills. What they said about themselves is what the client reads.

  • Sub the candidate

    No email, no sendout. The document is ready; the pitch is yours.

  • Attach to Ashby

    Ashby publishes no file-upload action, so there the CV stays in Drive. Greenhouse and Lever take the attachment.

Time back

Eight to twelve hours a month, straight back to billing

Time back
8–12 hrs a month
Spent on
Being on the phone
What it costs
$49 / monthGrowthplan — see what’s included

How that’s worked out: Based on 25–35 submissions a month at 25–40 minutes each to reformat by hand. Call it a day and a half a month — and it's a day and a half currently spent by a consultant who bills when they're on the phone and doesn't when they're fixing a two-column layout at half six.

Fair questions

The questions recruiters ask first

Our template is genuinely specific. Will it actually match it?

You give it the real document, not a description of one. It copies your template and fills it, so the output is your file with content in it rather than an approximation. Where a CV has something your template has no home for — a publications list, a portfolio link — it's flagged rather than dropped.

What happens to candidate data, and where does it go?

It reads the CV in your Drive or Dropbox and writes the formatted version back to the same place. The documents stay in your storage, under your retention rules and your DPA with that provider. Nothing is retained as a training corpus, and the original file is never modified — so a candidate's right-to-erasure request is satisfied by deleting from your Drive, exactly as it is today.

Isn't stripping contact details something we should do manually to be safe?

Doing it manually is precisely why it occasionally doesn't happen — at half six on a Thursday somebody misses a number in a footer. A rule applied to every CV is more reliable than a habit applied by a tired person, and you still read the document before it goes.

More off the same desk

Other things that keep falling off the list

The same job in other industries

FAQ

Questions worth answering properly

What file types can it read?

Word documents, PDFs, and Google Docs — including the awkward ones built out of tables and text boxes. Because it rebuilds into your template rather than editing the original, a badly structured source doesn't produce a badly structured output.

Does it change what the candidate wrote?

No. Job descriptions, achievements and the profile come across exactly as written. It removes what your house rules say to remove and standardises dates and headings. It does not improve, reword, or add anything — that would be putting words in a candidate's mouth on a document carrying your logo.

Where does candidate data actually go?

It reads from and writes to your own Drive or Dropbox. The documents stay in your storage under your existing retention policy and provider agreement. Nothing is kept as a training corpus, and because the original file is never altered, deleting a candidate works exactly as it does today.

Can it anonymise fully, not just strip contact details?

Yes, per client. Some agencies anonymise names and current employers for certain accounts and only strip contact details for the rest. You set that once per client and it applies from then on.

Does the formatted CV go back into our ATS?

On Greenhouse and Lever, yes — both support attaching a file to a candidate record. Ashby doesn't publish a file-upload action, so there the document stays in Drive. No ATS is required either way.

What if the CV has a gap or a contradiction?

It flags it and changes nothing. An unexplained year or two dates that disagree get surfaced as notes for you to raise with the candidate. It will never widen a date range or drop a short role to make a history look tidier.

Get your evenings back off the copy-paste

Point it at the folder CVs already land in and upload your template. The next one that arrives comes back on your letterhead.

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