Editorial policy

Who writes our guides

Guides on Applystead are written by the Applystead editorial team, with AI assistance in drafting. Every guide names the Applystead editorial team as its author and shows the date it was last updated.

Our guides have not been reviewed by independent outside experts, and no page claims that they have. They are general job-search information, not legal, tax or financial advice.

How we choose and check sources

Every guide lists its sources at the end, with a note on what each one supports. We cite a source only after opening it and checking that it says what the guide relies on it for.

• We cite authoritative publishers: government agencies, university career centers and professional bodies.
• Facts about how a specific product works come from its maker’s own pages, such as an applicant tracking system vendor’s help pages for candidates or an outside service’s own rules.
• We do not cite commercial career sites, resume-builder companies or open encyclopedias.
• Every source link uses a secure https address, and links in a guide’s own text go only to other Applystead pages; the outside-service and further-reading boxes described below are the only exceptions.
• We do not invent statistics, quotes, experts or outcomes. A number in a guide comes from a cited source.

Examples are illustrative

Resume lines, cover letter passages, interview answers, emails and other examples are written for each guide. They are labelled as examples, they are not real applicants’ documents, and they do not describe real results.

What we say about Applystead

Guides explain how to do something whatever tools you use. Where a guide mentions Applystead, it does so in a separate box and describes only what the product does today.

We do not accept payment to feature, rank or link to any product, company or source, and no page carries paid placements.

Outside services we mention

Some guides include a step an outside service can do for you, such as a phone call to a business. After the section that explains that step, those guides show a labelled box that names one service able to do it and links to it: today that is call4.me, which lets an AI assistant place phone calls. A guide about using such services may also name one as an example in its text.

The guide’s advice works whether or not you use the service, and Applystead does not run or sell it. We describe a service only with facts from its own public pages, which the box links, and a guide whose own text relies on those pages lists them under its sources. We are not paid for these boxes or their links.

Further reading on other sites

A guide may point to one article on another site that goes further on part of its topic. It appears in a labelled Further reading box right after the section it adds to, and the box names the article’s publisher.

Further reading is not a source: nothing in the guide relies on it, so it may come from a company that sells career products, and the box says when the article promotes its publisher’s own products. We link an article only after reading it, and we describe it only with what the article itself says. We are not paid for these links. A publisher may link to Applystead in return, but we never link an article for that alone.

How guides are updated and dated

We revise a guide when a source changes, when a reader reports an error, or when the advice needs more depth, and the guide’s updated date changes when its content does.

Before a guide is published or updated, an automated check confirms its structure: the required sections and lengths, secure source links, no sources from excluded commercial career sites, and no outside links in the guide’s own text. A guide that fails the check is not published.

How we write comparisons

Our comparison pages show how Applystead compares with other job search tools and what it can do for your search. Applystead publishes them, and each page says so at the top.

Facts about another product come from that company’s own public pages. Every row of a comparison table cites the page it relies on, and every comparison shows the date we checked those facts. Facts about Applystead come from our current plans and product.

If you work for a company we compare and something is wrong or out of date, tell us and we will check it and correct the page.

Corrections and questions

If you find an error in a guide or a comparison, email hello@applystead.com with the page address and what is wrong. We check every report against the sources and, when a page is wrong, correct it and update its date.