I Tested Jobly for New Grad Job Applications — Here's What Happened

As a new grad, your resume and cover letter are basically your foot in the door. I wanted to see if Jobly could make the process less painful without turning my application into a template mess. So I tested it for a few actual job applications—here’s what I found.

1. Tailoring resumes for a new grad job – Jobly’s AI quickly pulled keywords from a job description I pasted in. For a business analyst role, it suggested a summary that actually matched the posting. But the bullet points it generated for my internship experience needed heavy rewording—they sounded like they were written by a robot. That’s the tradeoff: speed for personality.
2. Cover letter generation – This was the highlight. I fed it a job description and it wrote a cover letter in under a minute. For a software engineering new grad job, the structure was solid and it even included a placeholder for a specific project. But it didn’t pick up on the nuance of a startup’s culture—I had to manually swap in a more personal anecdote. Still, it saved me a good 20 minutes.
3. Free tier and limits – Jobly is often listed among the best free AI resume builder options, and the free version gives you a handful of resumes and cover letters. For a new grad applying to 30+ roles, you’ll hit that ceiling fast. That’s a real friction point unless you’re okay with paying. As we head into 2026, the free AI resume builder 2026 landscape is crowded, but the jobly ai resume builder feels like a middle ground—useful for drafts, less so for final polish.
4. Overall fit for new grads – I’d say it’s a decent starting point, but I wouldn't trust it alone for a competitive new grad job search. The AI sometimes recycled phrasing across two different industries (marketing vs. engineering). You definitely need to review and inject your own voice.

Honestly, jobly helped me get past the blank page problem faster. But the real time went into editing and fact-checking. If you're crunched for time and know what to look for, it’s useful. Just don’t expect a final draft without a few rounds of your own tweaks.