Getting the most out of Rolebird
Rolebird turns a job listing you like into a tailored cover letter and a list of CV changes - grounded in your own documents. Here’s how to set it up and get great results.
Quick start
- Buy a run. Pick a pack - one run is one tailored application, and each pack also includes a fixed number of free revision credits for updating what you generate. There is no subscription, nothing renews, and unused runs sit on your account until you use them. Capturing jobs is free, so you can build a shortlist first and spend runs only on the ones you are serious about.
- Upload your CV and a base cover letter - a PDF, Word file, or plain
.txt, or just paste the text - with your personal details removed (see below). Rolebird checks them, and what happens next depends on what it finds: contact details, ID and bank numbers, an address or a profile link stop the upload; a likely name, referees or a driver licence are flagged for you to fix or accept. Employer names and dates aren’t detected at all, so generalising those is on you. - Install the browser extension and pin it to your toolbar.
- Browse the job boards as usual - Seek (any country, including Australia), Trade Me Jobs, Student Job Search, or Jobspace.
- On a listing you like, click Add to Interest. Rolebird prepares your documents in the background (one to three minutes for a high-quality result).
- Open the job in your dashboard, review and edit, download, then apply on the job site and mark it Applied.
Remove personal info before you upload
Rolebird is designed to hold as little that identifies you as it can. We still need your email address for the account, and a de-identified work history can still point back to a person - so this is minimisation, not anonymity. Before uploading, take these out of your CV and cover letter:
- Your name, and any referee names
- Phone number, email, and home address
- IRD number, driver licence, passport, bank account, date of birth
- Links to personal profiles (LinkedIn, portfolio, socials)
And generalise your employers: replace each company name with a short description and keep the dates - “Xero, 2019–2022” becomes “a NZ fintech, 2019–2022”. Keep the country and industry in every work and education entry (“a NZ fintech”, “a UK university”): that context, and the time period, are what the tailoring works from; the exact name isn’t needed. The upload screen gives you a one-click tool for this - our automatic check can’t detect company names on its own.
Tips for better results
Keep your base cover letter real
Upload one you’d actually send. Rolebird matches your voice - the closer your base letter is to how you write, the better every tailored version sounds.
Regenerate with an instruction
Not quite right? Add a note like “lead with my healthcare experience” or “shorter, more direct” and regenerate - it keeps everything else intact.
Use the change list, don’t paste it
Rolebird tells you which CV lines to strengthen for each role. Apply the ones that fit - your CV stays yours.
Mark jobs Applied
Keeping statuses up to date makes your dashboard a clean record of where you’ve applied, and moves finished jobs out of the way.
Reading the ATS check
Every job has an ATS check tab alongside the cover letter and CV changes. Many employers screen applications automatically before a person reads them, so the check gives you three honest signals - not one made-up score, because real screening systems vary too much between employers to fake a single number:
- Keyword match - a literal scan of whether the listing’s key terms appear word-for-word in your CV. The bluntest check, and the one an old-style keyword filter does.
- Substance match - a judgement of whether your experience genuinely covers what the role needs, even where you’ve worded it differently. It only credits things your CV actually shows.
- Format & structure - a read of your CV’s text for the headings, length, and clean formatting parsers expect. It checks the text we can see, not your original file’s layout.
Treat it as guidance for where to aim your CV changes, not a guarantee of how any particular employer’s system will score you. It refreshes whenever you regenerate.
Tracking where each job got to
Every captured job moves through five lists: Interests when you first save it, then Applied, Interview and Offer as things progress - plus Excluded for the ones you have decided against or that came to nothing.
Change it from the Stage dropdown on the job page, or from the buttons in the extension popup, which offers the next step along. Nothing moves on its own: Rolebird never detects that you applied, because it never submits anything for you.
The date you marked a job Applied is kept, and stays put as the job moves on - being rejected does not erase the fact that you applied. Move a job back to Interests and that date clears, since you are treating it as fresh again.
Notes
Each job has a timeline you can add dated entries to - “phone screen with the hiring manager”, “rejected, budget was $80k, reapply Q4”. Set the date to when it actually happened rather than when you write it down, and future dates are allowed, so a scheduled interview can go in before it happens.
Notes are for you. They are encrypted like your documents, they are included when you export your data, and they keep working when your balance runs out - your own record of your own search should not disappear because you stopped buying runs.
The extension
The extension adds one Add to Interest button to a job listing you open yourself. It only reads the page when you click that button - no background scanning, nothing sent anywhere until you ask. Get it from the Chrome Web Store.
Supported boards: Seek - every country site, so nz.seek.com, au.seek.com and the rest all work - Trade Me Jobs, Student Job Search (sjs.co.nz), and Jobspace. Note the writing itself is still tuned for the NZ market - Australia shares our spelling and CV conventions closely enough that it reads well, but it isn’t Australia-specific.
No extension, or on your phone? You don’t need it. Open your jobs and choose Add a job manually - paste the title, company, link and job description, and it joins your shortlist exactly like a captured listing. Handy for a board we don’t cover yet, too. Capturing is free either way; you only pay when you generate.
There is a daily cap on captures - 30 a day, the same for everyone. It exists only to stop an empty account filling up the database; nobody applies to that many jobs in a day, so it should never get in your way.
Managing your account
Everything account-related lives on your account page.
Replace or delete your CV & cover letter
Uploaded the wrong file, or your CV changed? On your account page, choose Replace documents to upload new ones (they replace the old ones), or Delete documents to start fresh.
Check your balance
Your account page shows how many job run credits you have left and where they went - every purchase, job run, revision, and any credit returned after a failed generation. There is nothing to cancel, because nothing recurs.
Export, delete, or sign out
From your account page you can see which email you’re signed in as, log out, download everything we hold, delete your data, or delete your account entirely.
Troubleshooting
I don’t see the “Add to Interest” button
Make sure you’re on a supported board and on a specific job listing (not the search results). If you clicked through from search, refresh the page once. If it still doesn’t appear, reopen the listing from a fresh tab.
My documents are “preparing” for a while
A high-quality tailored letter and CV change list usually takes one to three minutes. Open the job from your dashboard - it updates automatically when ready.
How do I stop being charged?
You already have. Runs are bought once and that is the end of it - there is no subscription, no renewal date and no card kept on file by us, so there is nothing to cancel. Stop buying and nothing happens: every letter and change list you generated stays available, and any unused runs are still there whenever you come back.
Still need help?
Send us a message and we’ll get back to you by email, usually within a day or two.
Your privacy, in short
We hold your email for your account and your (de-identified) documents to tailor them. There is no password - we sign you in with an emailed link, so we hold no credentials at all and a breach of ours could not leak one. Files are encrypted, you can export or delete everything at any time, and inactive accounts are deleted after 12 months - we email you twice first, and signing in once cancels it. How your documents are de-identified, or full detail on the privacy page.