how to add cover letter to ziprecruiter

How to Use ZipRecruiter for Your Job Search

You’ve probably heard ZipRecruiter’s ads on the radio or on your favorite podcast, or seen one of their millions of job listings. But is ZipRecrtuier a worthwhile tool for finding a job, or is it just another job listing site where you’ll be spammed with tons of irrelevant positions? 

Read on to find out more about ZipRecruiter, whether the site is legitimate and how to use it to find a job. 

What is ZipRecruiter?

ZipRecruiter is an online employment marketplace that helps companies find and hire high-quality candidates. 

For companies, it’s a one-stop way to post a job to more than 100 job boards and get recommendations for qualified candidates. For job seekers like you, it’s a way to get discovered by employers who are looking for applicants with your skills. 

Job seekers can browse millions of open positions and easily apply via their ZipRecruiter candidate profile. In addition to searching job listings, you can access the platform’s database of real salaries from real employers, which contains pay information for position titles in your specific location and the country as a whole. 

Is ZipRecruiter legit?

According to Consumer Affairs, a publication that vets companies and helps consumers make purchasing decisions, “ZipRecruiter is a legitimate, well-established hiring resource.” It has a 4.7 out of 5 rating on Trustpilot and has been Better Business Bureau accredited since 2012. Its employer clients include recognized companies like Bank of America, Target, and Verizon. 

Founded in 2010, the company has more than a decade-long track record of helping employers and employees connect with one another. In 2021, the company went public and is now traded on the New York Stock Exchange, which means its financial records and market dealings are subject to additional scrutiny. 

It’s important to note that ZipRecruiter is not involved in the hiring process. Once a candidate matches with a company, what happens from there is between those two parties. 

ZipRecruiter isn’t entirely without problems, though. Some candidates have complained on Reddit and other platforms about the volume of emails they receive from ZipRecruiter and the relevance (or lack thereof) of the jobs they’re matched with. 

Is ZipRecruiter free for job seekers?

ZipRecruiter is 100% free for people who are looking for a job. Candidates can browse the platform’s job and salary database at no charge, with or without building a profile. 

ZipRecruiter makes money by charging employers a fee for the use of its services. 

Make your next career move with our extensive ZipRecruiter feed of open jobs

How does ZipRecruiter work for job seekers?

ZipRecruiter offers a number of useful tools for job seekers at various stages of the search process. 

When you’re just starting your search, you can look for open positions by title, industry, and location or view salary trends for your area. 

When you’re ready to start applying, you can create a free profile that allows you to upload your resume and apply for most jobs in a single click. You’ll no longer have to fill out the same information over and over again for every job you’re interested in, saving loads of time. 

Once you’ve created your ZipRecruiter profile, you’ll receive daily alerts of new jobs from an “AI recruiter” that uses artificial intelligence to match you with the best-fitting positions. If you’ve applied for one or more jobs, you’ll receive emails alerting you to application views, new messages, and status changes. ZipRecruiter will also “promote” your resume to employers when it thinks you’re an exceptionally strong candidate for their role. 

ZipRecruiter has millions of open jobs posted from all over the country, making it a good option for candidates looking to manage all their listings, open applications and job-related conversations in one place. 

How do I use ZipRecruiter?

When you log into your free ZipRecruiter account, you’ll be greeted with your dashboard. It contains your suggested jobs, which are picked for you based on your resume and prior searches; applied jobs, which shows the status of any positions you’ve already applied for; and saved jobs, where you can see all of the positions you’ve saved for later. 

You’ll also see your unread alerts, which appear with the bell icon in the upper right hand corner, as well as any necessary next steps to fully complete your profile. 

This is where you’ll fill in all of the personal and professional information that employers will see. It includes the basics: your name, contact information, skills, experience and education. There are additional sections where you can add an objective statement, certifications, licenses, professional associations, and achievements.  

You can enter this information manually, which is basically like building a fresh resume from scratch, or you can upload your existing resume and ZipRecruiter will fill in the necessary information for you, 

Upload resume

To upload your resume, navigate to the Profile tab of your Dashboard and click the ‘Add Resume’ option. You can upload an existing file in one of the following formats: .PDF, doc, docx, .odt, txt, .wps. .docm or .rtf. PDF is the preferred file option for the cleanest upload. 

If your resume is missing any of the recommended information, like a headline, ZipRecruiter will prompt you to fill it in or skip it.

Related: Sample resumes and recommendations

Change resume

Once you’ve uploaded your resume, ZipRecruiter may ask you whether you want to include or delete certain jobs and/or information by clicking Yes or No. You can also make changes manually at any time. Do this by clicking the ‘Edit’ button next to any section of your profile. 

Add cover letter

Unlike many job application systems, ZipRecruiter does not require a cover letter to apply for jobs. In fact, you can’t add one until after you’ve applied for a position. Instead, the platform advises candidates to focus on optimizing their resumes, which is what determines whether you match with a particular position. 

Still, a cover letter can be useful in setting yourself apart once your resume makes it through the screening process to an actual human hiring manager. To add a cover letter to any job you’ve applied for, navigate to your Applied Jobs tab from your dashboard. Click Add Cover Letter on the desired position, then copy and paste the letter into the provided text box.

Related: How to write a cover letter

Message management

Messages are how you communicate with hiring managers. If you’ve used the messaging function on platforms like Facebook or LinkedIn, you’ll find the interface on Ziprecruiter similar. 

All of your conversations are displayed in chronological order. You can also search for conversations by name or by job title. 

Applying for a job

ZipRecruiter bills itself as being the easiest platform to apply for a job, and for most jobs, that’s the case. When you see a job you’re interested in, you’ll see one of two buttons: Apply or 1-click apply. If 1-click apply is not available, you’ll be taken to the company’s website or third-party service to complete your application. 

1 click apply ZipRecruiter

One of ZipRcruiter’s major selling points for candidates is its 1-Click Apply feature. It’s just what it sounds like: you can apply for jobs with a single click using the information in your profiel. In some cases, you’ll be prompted for additional information requested by the company. 

That’s it! As you can see, ZipRecruiter makes it easy for candidates who need to find a job ASAP to apply for multiple jobs quickly and get instant updates on their application status. 

Who are ZipRecruiter’s competitors?

Ziprecruiter vs careerbuilder.

Like ZipRecruiter, CareerBuilder lets candidates create a profile, browse and apply for jobs. One unique CareerBuilder tool is its ‘CoLab’ feature, which allows you to enter a position title and get recommendations for similar roles. This is useful if you have an industry in mind but aren’t sure which positions to pursue, or if you’re looking for a job that leverages similar skills in a different field. 

ZipRecruiter vs Glassdoor

While Glassdoor offers job listings, its primary value proposition for job seekers is its employer reviews. On the site, you can read reviews of companies from employees who have actually interviewed and worked there, which can be a gold mine of useful information when job searching. 

ZipRecruiter vs Indeed

Indeed is the most similar platform to ZipRecriter on the applicant side, allowing job seekers to create a candidate profile and find jobs. However, ZipRecruiter has a leg up when it comes to ease of application. On ZipRecruiter, you can apply for most jobs without leaving the site, while Indeed will often take you to the company’s website or another platform where you’ll need to enter all your information from scratch. 

ZipRecruiter vs LinkedIn

While LinkedIn offers a robust set of tools for job seekers, including job listings, it’s primarily a professional networking platform. It’s a good option if you’re looking to connect with a human recruiter, who can share their clients’ open positions and keep you abreast of new jobs. Like ZipRecruiter, LinkedIn also offers the option to apply for many jobs from directly within the app. 

ZipRecruiter vs Monster

Monster.com offers job and salary databases that are similar to those of ZipRecruiter. You’ll often find different jobs listed on each platform, so it can be useful to browse both. Where Monster.com shines is its resources for job seekers, which include helpful career advice articles and fee-based resume-writing service. Monster is also very active on social media, so they’re a good account to follow if you’re looking for a job. 

ZipRecruiter vs Workable

Whereas ZipRecruiter is a tool for both candidates and employers, Workable is a recruiting platform geared mainly to employers. It helps hiring managers find great talent, but it’s much more focused on recruiting functionalities like sourcing and screening candidates than it is on job-seeker functions like new job alerts. 

So, is ZipRecruiter worth it? The bottom line is that if you’re in need of a new job fast and want a tool that helps you stay on top of your search, you’ll find ZipRecruiter useful. And, at a cost of $0, it’s definitely worth trying out.

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How To Upload Resume On Ziprecruiter

A lot of people start looking for jobs online, through sites like TheJobList or SimplyHired.com. There are also many social media platforms where employers advertise positions they have. These include things such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

By uploading your resume on these sites, you increase your chance of being contacted by potential employers. If you want more job opportunities, this is necessary work!

However, there is one site that can be tricky to use – ZipRecruiter.

ZipRecruiter was created in 2012, but has become very popular recently. It is an online platform where businesses look to hire employees. Companies create their own profiles on ZipRecruiter, and potential employees upload resumes and cover letters. Employers then contact the candidates via email or phone.

There are some benefits to using ZipRecruiter, but what may seem difficult at first can be done easily. In this article, we will show you how to quickly begin creating your profile and find employment through this website.

Free or pro, plain text or profile

First, you have to create an account, then you can pick either of the two most common types of resumes that people use – LinkedIn profiles or plain text documents.

ZipRecruiter allows you to add up to 5 documents as attachments to your profile. It also has some basic customization options like adding/removing tags, changing the position, and editing content.

However, don’t expect too much extra functionality than that! The more advanced features are available only to Pro members. But being a pro gives you all the other tools.

The free version does include one document attachment, but it will be limited to just 30 seconds long. After that, you need to upgrade in order to continue uploading files.

Create your profile

After you create your account, you will need to pick yourself as the employer or recruiter! This is very important because it allows people to view your professional career and educational background. You can choose to be anonymous, but that would limit how many opportunities you could join for potential employment.

ZipRecruiter offers several ways to create your profile. The easiest way is to use your Gmail address so that all of your personal information is linked together. Make sure to update your email in case someone leaves spam messages on your account!

You do not have to include every detail about yourself, such as what city and state you live in. Some employers and recruiters may contact you later to find out more details.

Upload your resume

A lot of career services providers offer online applications to search for new jobs. These apps allow you to upload your most recent resume, as well as include potential employers’ contact information.

Most job searching apps have you create an account through their site, but some do not. You can usually log in using your email address and password. Some make you choose between uploading a mobile or desktop version of your resume, so be sure to pick one!

Many sites also offer to help you build your profile if needed, which is very useful since you are giving out personal info that may be familiar to you but not necessarily others. By creating a professional looking profile, people will be inclined to take a look at your profile.

There are many free app-based job seeking sites out there. Try some out to see which ones work best for you.

The easy part...

After you have uploaded your resume, it is time to accept those opportunities that are a good match for you and take advantage of them!

Doesn’t matter if you get a cold response or if they ask many questions — unless they really wanted someone with their experience, you should consider accepting their offer.

On ZipRecruiter, you will receive up to 20 messages a day from employers looking to meet you. If you don’t respond within 24 hours, these opportunities probably aren’t worth your time. So, be sure to stay in touch after you upload your resume!

And when an opportunity does come along that seems like a perfect fit, go ahead and say yes!

It would be great to walk away without ever interviewing anyone, but in this industry there's always going to be something new coming around the bend. By being proactive about finding employment, you'll prevent yourself from having to spend too much time searching for work.

Talk to potential employers

When you upload your resume online, it is important to talk to potential employers about what tools they use for recruitment. Some prefer free job listing websites like Craigslist or LinkedIn, while others use more professional services such as ZipRecruiter or Monster.

By using a website that works for them, their audience can easily find your profile and read your resume! This is an effective way to get exposure for your career and connect with new people. It also helps you gain some credibility when you advertise yourself as a qualified employee via these sites.

Before you go ahead and upload

Finding new jobs is hard. It can feel like an uphill battle at times. However, there are some things you can do to make your search more efficient.

The first thing you should do when looking for work is evaluate the strengths of your current (or past) employer. What skills did you have that made you successful? Did you grow in your position?

These qualities can be transferred into another company. By using these as points for your resume, you will emphasize how well you handle responsibilities and increase your appeal to potential employers.

Furthermore, find out what types of positions their management or staff members have. This way you can put those onto your own resume!

Last, check out the other documents such as LinkedIn profiles and blogs to see if anyone else has success with this company. If so, add that information to your own profile or spread them about yourself.

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How to create ZipRecruiter profile

Creating and setting up a ziprecruiter account.

The process here is based on the US version of the site.

This page takes you directly to account creation.

1) First of all, you need to indicate that you are looking for a job and answer a series of questions about your job preferences, such as salary, location, job title

2) Finish creating the account - either with Google or by entering credentials manually

If you entered info manually, you will need to verify the account via a verification email that you receive after this step

3) Upload your resume (it should be approved by your career coach) and fill out the profile. There is a lot, but when you upload the resume many sections will get auto-filled

You can always contact your career coach if you are unsure of the best way to complete your profile

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The weird new hiring wars

AI bots are battling it out over job searches. No matter who wins, we all lose.

When Josh Holbrook, a software engineer in Alaska, was laid off in January, he didn't expect to spend too much time looking for a new job. He certainly didn't think he'd need to relearn the job-hunt process.

A few weeks into his search, however, Holbrook found himself out of his depth. Instead of speaking with a human recruiter at a local healthcare organization, he was screened by an AI chatbot. His résumé, created nearly a decade ago in a technical format popular among academics, was incompatible with new automated recruitment platforms. He signed up for a professional service to update it in an AI-friendly format.

"The experience was completely novel," Holbrook told me. "I've never seen that before."

Over the past couple of years, job seekers have been forced to contend with incessant layoffs , a brutal recruitment market , and days of unpaid assignments. They can now add AI recruiting systems to that pile. In 2022, the Society for Human Resource Management found that about 40% of the large-scale employers it surveyed said they were already deploying AI in HR-related activities like recruitment. Rik Mistry, who consults on large-scale corporate recruitment, told Business Insider that AI is now leveraged to write job descriptions, judge an applicant's skills, power recruiting chatbots, and rate a candidate's responses. Ian Siegel, the CEO of ZipRecruiter, estimated in 2022 that nearly three-fourths of all résumés were never seen by humans.

Some job hunters have decided to fight fire with fire, turning to programs that use AI to optimize their résumés and apply to hundreds of jobs at a time. But the emerging AI-versus-AI recruitment battle is bad news for everyone. It turns hiring into a depersonalized process, it inundates hiring managers, and it reinforces weaknesses in the system it's designed to improve. And it only seems to be getting worse.

Automation in recruitment isn't new: After job sites like Monster and LinkedIn made it easy for people to apply for jobs in the early 2010s, companies adopted applicant-tracking systems to manage the deluge of online applications. Now most résumés are first seen by software designed to evaluate a person's experience and education and rank them accordingly.

The automation has helped ease the burden on overstretched recruiters — but not by much. As the stacks of digital résumés have grown amid frequent changes to remote-work policies, the recruitment hamster wheel has spun ever faster.

We know AI isn't perfect, but we have to use it as there's pressure from the higher-ups.

AI is supposed to fix this mess, saving companies time and money by outsourcing even more of the hiring process to machine-learning algorithms. In late 2019, Unilever said it had saved 100,000 hours and about $1 million in recruitment costs with the help of automated video interviews. Platforms like LinkedIn and ZipRecruiter have started using generative AI to offer candidates personalized job recommendations and let recruiters generate listings in seconds. The Google-backed recruitment-tech startup Moonhub has an AI bot that scours the internet, gathering data from places like LinkedIn and Github, to find suitable candidates. On HireVue, employers can let a bot with a set questionnaire conduct video assessments to analyze candidates' personalities . Newer startups combine these abilities in a centralized service, allowing firms to put " hiring on autopilot ."

But hiring experts Business Insider spoke with weren't convinced it's all for the best. Many fear that over time AI will make an already frustrating system worse and spawn fresh issues like ghost hires, where companies are misled into recruiting a bot masquerading as a person.

Several seasoned recruiters told me they hadn't incorporated AI into their workflow beyond auto-generating job descriptions and summarizing candidate calls. Tatiana Becker, who specializes in tech recruiting, said software that claims to match résumés with jobs lacked the nuance to do more than keyword matching — it couldn't, for instance, identify desirable candidates who came from top schools or had a history of earning strong promotions. Chatbots that Becker's boutique agency experimented with would frequently mismatch prospects and roles, ultimately pushing the prospects away.

This résumé matching "might work for applicants of more entry-level jobs," Becker told BI, "but I would worry about using it for anything else at this point."

Despite the problems, many companies are marching forward. "We know AI isn't perfect, but we have to use it as there's pressure from the higher-ups," said a recruiter in a Fortune 500 firm who spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly discuss his company's hiring process.

Pallavi Sinha, the vice president of growth at Humanly, a startup that offers a conversational-AI hiring platform to companies like Microsoft, said that "AI in recruiting, similar to other industries, is very much at a nascent stage." But she predicted it would continue to be incorporated into hiring.

"AI isn't here to replace human interactions," she said, "but to make our jobs and lives easier — something that we'll see more and more of over time." Sinha declined to share how many applications Humanly had processed but said its chatbot service had over a "million conversations last year alone."

For candidates, though, AI has been a nightmare. Kerry McInerney, an AI researcher at the University of Cambridge, said AI increases the amount of labor for applicants, forcing them to complete puzzles and attend automated interviews just to get to the selection stage. She argued that it makes a "depersonalized process even more alienating."

Holbrook, the software engineer, wrote on LinkedIn about his frustration. "AI is too stupid to recognize transferrable skills among tech applicants," he said, adding, "I had a resume bounced because I don't have c# listed as a fluent language, even though I've dealt with c# in my jobs and have worked with plenty of languages that are 90% the same as c#."

Danielle Caldwell, a user-experience strategist in Portland, Oregon, was confused when an AI chatbot texted her to initiate the conversation about a role she had applied for. At first, she thought it was spam. After the exchange, she was left with more questions.

"There was no way to ask questions with the bot — it was a one-way experience," Caldwell said.

The University of Sussex has found that AI video interviews can be disorienting for job seekers , who behave much less naturally in the absence of a reassuring human presence. Plus, Mclnerney said, assessing a candidate's personality based on their body language and appearance is not only "reminiscent of 19th- and 20th-century racial pseudoscience but simply doesn't work." Her research has demonstrated that even things like wearing a headscarf or having a bookshelf in the background can change a personality score.

With AI you are only accelerating the brokenness of recruiting.

A cottage industry of tools has sprung up to help candidates game AI systems. One called LazyApply, for example, can apply to thousands of jobs online on your behalf for $250. "Anyone who has had to review over 50 résumés in one sitting wants to put a toothpick in their eyes," said Peter Laughter, who's been in recruitment for about three decades. With AI, he said, "you are only accelerating the brokenness of recruiting."

Bonnie Dilber, a recruiting manager at Zapier, said these services contributed to problematic behaviors on both sides of hiring. Candidates' submitting hundreds of applications leaves recruiting teams struggling to keep up and respond, which in turn pushes applicants to feel that they need to submit even more applications to stand a chance.

A more pressing issue, Dilber added, is that often these bots submit poor applications. Dilber and other recruiters told BI that some cover letters say only, "This has been submitted by [AI tool], please contact [person's email] with questions." When Aki Ito, a BI correspondent, tried using AI to apply for jobs , the system got her race wrong, made up that she spoke Spanish, and submitted an outdated cover letter.

"We had some people accidentally include ChatGPT's entire response," Hailley Griffis, the head of communications and content at Buffer, told BI. Griffis, who said she reviewed an average of 500 applications per open role, added, "There is a very distinct tone with a lot of AI content that hasn't been edited, and we saw a lot of that."

Recruiters and researchers also worry about AI's tendency to reinforce many of the recruitment industry's existing biases . Researchers from the Berkeley Haas Center for Equity, Gender and Leadership said in 2021 that of about 133 biased AI systems they analyzed, about 44% exhibited gender bias. Other recent studies have found that AI systems are prone to screening out applicants with disabilities and de-ranking résumés with names associated with Black Americans.

Unlike a human, an algorithm will never look at past hiring decisions and rectify its mistakes, said Sandra Wachter, a tech and regulation professor at the University of Oxford. It will always do as it has been taught.

Wachter, whose team developed a bias test that's been adopted by companies like IBM and Amazon, believes it's possible to use AI to make fairer decisions — but for that to happen, employers need to address systemic issues with more inclusive data and regular checks. Moonhub, for example, has a human recruiter who vets the AI's recommendations and speaks with candidates who prefer a human over a chatbot.

But until AI improves enough, humans will remain the most effective hiring systems. Becker, the tech recruiter, said humans were still critical for "getting to the heart of the candidate's decision-making process and helping them overcome apprehensions if they've gotten cold feet," as well as for "dealing with counteroffers."

David Francis, a vice president at Talent Tech Labs, a recruitment research and advisory firm, said that while "recruitment is still and will always be a very human-focused process," AI "is a tool and can be used effectively or poorly."

But when it's used poorly, both candidates and recruiters suffer. After four months of job searching, Josh Holbrook has yet to find a job.

Shubham Agarwal  is a freelance technology journalist from Ahmedabad, India, whose work has appeared in Wired, The Verge, Fast Company, and more.

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