Preparing Documents for Job Applications: A Practical Checklist

Application systems are unforgiving in uninteresting ways. A file that is 2 MB over a limit, a HEIC photo of a certificate, a CV named Document1.pdf — none of these say anything about your suitability, and all of them create friction at exactly the wrong moment.

Use PDF, almost always

Unless the posting explicitly asks for Word, submit PDF. It renders identically everywhere, which means your careful layout survives the journey. A Word document opened on a machine without your fonts can reflow badly, and page breaks move.

The exception worth respecting: some applicant tracking systems parse Word more reliably than PDF. If the instructions ask for .docx, send .docx.

Name files like an adult

A recruiter may be looking at two hundred files in one folder. CV.pdf is useless to them.

Use Firstname-Lastname-CV.pdf and Firstname-Lastname-Cover-Letter.pdf. If the posting has a reference number, include it. Avoid spaces and special characters, which occasionally break older upload systems.

Combine when asked for one file

Many portals accept a single attachment. The conventional order is CV, then cover letter, then certificates and references.

Merge PDF handles this. Check the page order in the output before uploading — merged files very often come out in a different order than intended, and nobody notices until it is submitted.

Get under the size limit properly

Portals commonly cap uploads at 2, 5 or 10 MB. A text CV should be well under a megabyte; if yours is 15 MB, something is wrong — usually a scanned certificate at excessive resolution or an uncompressed photograph.

Order of operations:

• Remove pages nobody asked for. Supporting material you were not invited to send is often better left out.
• Compress the result. For documents containing scans, this routinely cuts size by most of its bulk.
• Keep text selectable if you can — many systems parse your CV automatically, and they cannot read an image.

That last point is worth emphasising. If you compress your CV into images to fit a limit, an automated parser sees a blank document. Keep the CV itself as real text, and compress only the scanned attachments.

Handle certificates and ID scans properly

These usually start as phone photos. The sequence that produces a professional result:

• Photograph them well — see how to scan with your phone.
• iPhone users: convert with HEIC to JPG first, as many portals reject HEIC outright.
• Convert to PDF with Image to PDF.
• Fix any sideways pages with Organize PDF. A rotated certificate looks careless.

Before you submit

• Open the final PDF and read it start to finish, on a different device if possible.
• Check every page is the right way up and in the right order.
• Confirm the file size is under the stated limit with room to spare.
• Check the filename one more time.
• Verify no internal notes, tracked changes or draft comments survived into the PDF.

One privacy point

Job applications contain your address, date of birth, employment history and often scanned identity documents — a near-complete identity theft kit in one file. Preparing it by uploading to free converters means that package sits on servers you know nothing about.

Every tool linked above runs entirely in your browser. For this particular category of document, that is worth caring about.