You give it your work history, or an old resume, or a LinkedIn profile. It rewrites each bullet point in tighter language. Then it lays the result out in a template that applicant tracking systems can read. Paste in a job posting and it matches your wording to the keywords in the ad.
Most builders also score your resume against the posting and flag missing skills. Some write the cover letter from the same inputs. The good ones keep a master resume and spin off a tailored copy per application. You are not editing one file forever.
Most have a free tier that covers the basics: one resume, a few templates, a limited number of AI rewrites. The paid tiers unlock unlimited tailoring, more templates, keyword matching and tracking. Prices run from about $5 to $30 a month. Many sell weekly plans aimed at people in an active search.
Watch the billing pattern. Weekly plans add up fast if a search runs for months. Check whether a plan renews by the week or the month before you enter a card.
A tracker is a board or spreadsheet that follows every application from saved to applied to interview to offer. The AI versions read job postings through a browser extension and fill in the company and role for you. They remind you to follow up. Some pull in contacts from LinkedIn and draft outreach.
The point is memory. After thirty applications, nobody remembers which version of the resume went where. The tracker does.
They submit applications on your behalf, sometimes hundreds a week. Volume goes up. Quality usually goes down, because the same resume goes to every posting. Recruiters see the pattern too, and some job boards block the bots outright.
Use them for roles where the application is a form and the resume is standard. For anything where a tailored letter matters, apply by hand and let the tracker do the remembering.