Canva Resume Builder Review

Years and years back, before the advent of digital graphic design, resumes are expected to be just a plain document filled with information about yourself. However, as years go by, more and more people are starting to use the power of visuals to make their resume stand out. From using the company’s colors to putting infographics about your skills, resume presentation has sure come a long way.

You want a modern and hip resume design but don’t have any graphic design skills to make it happen? Canva may be the right resume builder for you. Canva is an online digital graphic design site specializing in providing thousands of templates that are easily editable. Among Canva’s offers are templated resumes. With a wide variety through its hundreds of templates, you will indeed find one that suits your personality and mood.

This extensive (and unbiased) Canva Resume Builder Review will discuss the experience of creating a resume using their website, support options, reviews, and other information about the website.

About Canva
Setting up Your Canva Account
Building Your Resume on Canva
Canva Pricing
Canva Support
Canva Privacy Policy
Canva Resume Builder Reviews
The Pros of Using Canva
The Cons of Using Canva
Final Thoughts — Should You Use Canva to Build Your Resume?

Let’s get started.

About Canva

Canva is a website designed to design various files like social media posts, documents, posters, among others.

According to their website, the Canva journey began back in 2007 when Melanie Perkins studied at the University of Western Australia. Melanie taught students how to use programs such as InDesign and Photoshop — programs that people found hard to learn and even harder to use.

After coming up with an idea for an online tool to create school yearbooks, Melanie and Canva co-founder Cliff Obrecht took out a loan and brought in a great tech team to build Fusion Books.

Melanie and Cliff believed Fusion Books had applications beyond the yearbook market, and they knew they had to pursue their vision.

The only thing Melanie and Cliff needed was a fantastic technology co-founder. They looked for a while before finding Cameron Adams, a hardcore Googler, who’d worked on Wave and a few other projects. He shared their vision and culture, and he is now Canva’s Chief Product Officer.

Thirteen years after, Canva is now a team of designers, developers, artists, marketers, investors, and advisors.

Setting Up Your Canva Account

Canva is one of the resume builders where you have to sign up and create an account to use their actual resume building features.

To sign up, go to Canva’s Resume Builder’s website and click the “SignUp” button at the upper right corner of the main page.

Alternatively, you can also click the “Create your own resume” button in the middle of the main page.

Clicking either of the two buttons will lead to Canva’s sign up page if you do not have an account with them yet.

You can sign up with your email (just put in your name, email, and elected password), or you could also sign up through your Facebook and Google accounts.

Building Your Resume on Canva

After signing up, Canva will lead you directly to their main resume editing page.

To choose a template for your resume, select from the choices shown in the left bar of their editor. Canva has more than 100+ templates in its library.

Once you have chosen a template, it will appear on your editing page on the right-hand side.

Just click on the textbox and replace the default text with your details to fill in your details.

You can also edit your selected text’s formatting on the toolbar on the editor’s upper portion. From here, you can change, adjust, or modify:

Font.
Font size.
Font color.
Font style.
Text alignment.
Font effects.
Others.

You can also add elements to your resume through the toolbar on the leftmost side of the screen. From here, you can add photos, text, shapes, music, videos, backgrounds, QR codes, among others.

Once you are satisfied with how your resume looks, click the download button on the upper right side.

Canva Pricing

While most of Canva resume building tools are free, you can still subscribe to one of their packages. Subscribing to their packages means you get access to premium features that can be used Canva-wide (not only in their resume building portion).

To check out their prices, go to Canva’s main page and click “Plans” at the top of the screen.

Below is a table detailing the pricing model of Canva.

Package	Features	Pricing
Free	250,000+ free templates. 100+ design types (social media posts, presentations, letters, and more). Hundreds of thousands of free photos and graphics. Invite members to your team. Collaborate and comment in real-time. 5GB of cloud storage.	Free.
Pro	Everything Free has, plus: Create 1 Brand Kit and upload your fonts and logos. One-click design Magic Resize. 420,000+ free templates with new designs daily. 75+ million premium stock photos, videos, audio, and graphics free-to-use. Save designs as templates for your team to use. 100GB of cloud storage. Schedule social media content to 7 platforms.	$13.50 billed monthly / $125 billed annually.
Enterprise	Everything Canva Pro has, plus: Establish your brand’s visual identity with logos, colors, and fonts across multiple Brand Kits. Control your team’s access to apps, graphics, colors, logos, and fonts with brand controls. Control team uploads into Canva. Built-in workflows to get approval on your designs. Set which elements your team can edit and stay on-brand with template locking. Unlimited storage. Single-sign on (SSO). 24/7 Enterprise-level support.	$31 per month.

Canva Support

For questions, complaints, and feedback, Canva has a Help Center.

To go to their help center, scroll through the bottom of their resume builder’s main page, and click “Support”. It is under the column “Resources”.

Canva’s Help Center has a typing bar at the center of their screen to search for your immediate concerns or questions.

They have 15 topics you can browse through for your questions or needs. These are:

Getting Started.
Navigate Your Homepage.
Create Your Design.
Account Basics.
Canva Pro.
Team Settings.
Billing and Plans.
Publish.
Contributors.
Canva Print.
Canva for Android.
Canva for iOs.
Legal.
Contact Us.
Something’s Not Working.

If their Help Center still can’t resolve your issues, or should you wish to get in touch with their team directly, you can send them a message through their website. However, they do not have a phone support system at the time of this writing.

To get in touch with Canva, click “Something’s Not Working”. It will lead you to their “Need Help?” section.

From there, click “Canva Error” in one of the subheads in their Help Center.

Then click “Customer support” and another “Contact Us” from one of the icons or under the list of subheads on the left.

It will lead you to Canva’s explainer on how to resolve some errors. Click “let us know here” to go to a submission form to report an incident directly to Canva’s team. (This will require you to log in to your Canva account.)

You will then be taken to Canva’s report page. Choose what type of complaint you want to report based on the options provided on the drop-down menu. The options are:

Uploading.
Downloading.
Sharing.
Saving.
Printing.
Other.

And then, on the text box, type in your issue and click “Submit”.

Canva Privacy Policy

Canva’s Privacy Policy was last updated in January 2020.

To view their privacy policy, scroll down the main page of Canva’s Resume Builder page and click “Terms and Privacy” at the lower right corner of the page under the column “Company”.

From here, you will be led to Canva’s terms of use. Click “Privacy Policy” as it is mentioned in their terms of use. It will direct you to their privacy policy.

Canva’s Privacy Policy consists of 15 subheads, including:

Information we collect and its use.
How we use your information.
Sharing your information.
Ads on Canva.
How we transfer, store, and protect your data.
Cross-border transfers of information (for users in the EEA).
Keeping your information safe.
Compromise of information.
Your choices about your information.
How long we keep your information.
Children’s privacy and Canva for Education.
Links to other websites and services.
California users’ Privacy Rights.
Changes to this Policy.
How to contact us.

Among the highlights of the Privacy Policy include:

“We will not rent or sell your information to third parties outside Canva and its group companies (including any parent, subsidiaries, and affiliates) without your consent.”

“Canva cares about the security of your information and uses appropriate safeguards to preserve the integrity and security of all information collected through the Service. To protect your privacy and security, we take reasonable steps (such as requesting a unique password) to verify your identity before granting you access to your account. You are responsible for maintaining the secrecy of your unique password and account information, and for controlling access to your email communications from Canva, at all times.”

“If we are unable to resolve your request, or if you are concerned about a potential violation, you also have the option to report the issue or make a complaint to the data protection authority in your jurisdiction.”

“If any information under our control is compromised as a result of a breach of security, Canva will take reasonable steps to investigate the situation and where appropriate, notify those individuals whose information may have been compromised and take other steps, in accordance with any applicable laws and regulations.”

Canva also has a separate security page that details how they keep your information and designs safe in their databases.

To access this, scroll down to the bottom of Canva’s main Resume Builder page, then click “Security” at the lower right corner of the page under the column “Company”.

You will be directed to Canva’s security page, where they explain their security features. These security features are:

Encryption.
Data Security.
Highly available network.
A monitored and resilient threat detection system.
Secure development practice.
Staged releases.
Account security.
In-app permissions.

They also have a section for FAQs about Canva’s security and guidance tips to protect your account.

Canva Resume Builder Reviews

Canva is rated 2.1 on Trustpilot, but that is for the whole website and not the resume builder alone.

While Canva’s resume builder does not have a separate review page on independent review sites, some publications did a review on their Canva resume-building experience. Here are snippets of their experience:

Betterteam

“Canva’s resume builder is great for its uniqueness, creativity, and design and the free version offers a wide array of options. Users will have access to free customizable templates, background images, styles, and layouts, enough to design a great resume.”

Kickresume

“Canva is not really a resume builder. Instead, it is a tool to design stuff when you don’t want to pay for a graphic designer. What’s more, it’s really powerful. Super large number of templates. I tried to count the number of resume templates. I couldn’t. There’s too many.”

The Pros of Using Canva

1. A Wide Arsenal of Templates

Canva’s wide variety of templates is its main strong point. With over 100 templates to choose from, Canva’s resume builder does cover it all — from simple and clean looking resumes to the more hip and fun templates, Canva has you covered. You will find something in their template library that reflects your personality and the professional industry you are applying for.

2. Free to Download

While some elements are paid and will require a subscription, most of Canva’s features are free — including multi-format download. It dramatically helps job seekers who are just beginning their career path and those who are unemployed and need a career refresh.

3. Fairly Easy to Use

Canva’s resume builder is also easy to use and navigate. You don’t have to fill out separate forms, which will be generated into a resume. Canva’s resume builder directly edits the resume. You will click to edit as you go along. Its sections are also drag-and-drop, and all the tools for editing are universally known. Its layout is fully customizable yet friendly for all levels of resume builders.

The Cons of Using Canva

1. Not Ideal for Everyone

While Canva offers full customization at a fairly easy to navigate interface, having a drag and drop resume editor type is not exactly for everyone. Some might prefer templates that are already snapped and fixed in place, so it won’t be easy to mess up once editing.

2. No Other Career-Building Features

Because Canva is a graphic design site intended for a wide variety of publication materials, its resume builder does not have any other features aside from the variety of templates. Canva’s focus is largely on the design side, so do not expect industry-specific phrases, bullet points, and other resume building tools.

Final Thoughts — Should You Use Canva to Build Your Resume?

Canva’s Interface — Canva’s interface is different from other resume builders. It does not have the step-by-step process to fill out the various sections of your resume. Canva proceeds directly to their resume builder. Their user interface is new, simple, and easy-to-follow with drag-and-drop features throughout the editor.
Best Feature — Canva’s main selling point is its extensive library of templates. From simple documents to ones with infographics and other fun, quirky elements, it is almost sure that there is a resume template for everyone. It is Canva’s strength that not all resume builders have. Plus, its resume is fully customizable, meaning you can move everything around through its drag-and-drop feature.
Other Extra Features — Canva does not have any other extra resume building features, understandably because it is a graphic design online tool and not a standalone resume builder.

Biggest Downfall — For resume builders whose intention is to have a complete resume-building experience and expects guidance in both content and design, Canva may not be the resume builder for you.
Top Complaint — Although the reviews on independent review sites are not of Canva’s resume builder alone for the entire website, users’ chief complaints include its pricing and extra fees that they incur upon subscribing.

Canva delivers through its promise of allowing everyone to design anything even if you don’t have a lot of design work experience. They do this through their extensive library of pre-designed resumes to cater to all types of resume builders.

Because the website focuses on design work and is not a designated resume building program, it does not have any other features that appear in other resume building websites, such as resume scanners or industry-related pre-written statements.

Overall, Canva is a good resume builder for those who want their resume to stand out with a unique and modern design. Although Canva’s resume builder does not have extra features usually built-in with other resume builders, they make up for it with a very extensive library of templates, making Canva worth a try for your resume building needs.