Using Involve Resume

Installing and Setting Up the Involve Chrome Extension

From the Chrome Web Store to your first match score on a job page: what the extension asks permission for, why, and what to check when it looks dead.

The extension does two things: it scores the job page you are reading against every CV you have, and it fills application forms. Neither of them happens until you press a button, and the setup is mostly about which permissions you hand over and when.

This post covers the install, the first score, every permission and what it is for, and the list of reasons the extension can look dead on a page.

Step 1: install it

Two clicks from the store.

1. Open the browser extension screen and press Add to Chrome. Confirm the dialog.
2. Come back to Involve, signed in, and parse your resume. A green "extension synced" badge confirms the extension has a copy.

That second step is the whole of the setup. There is no separate sign-in.

Chrome, Edge, Brave and other Chromium browsers install from the same listing, so there is no per-browser link. The manifest requires Chrome 111 or later.

If the store is blocked on your machine

Managed profiles at universities and large employers often block the Chrome Web Store outright. The extension screen carries a zip behind a collapsed line for exactly that case: download it, unzip it somewhere permanent, open the extensions page, turn on developer mode, and choose the folder with Load unpacked.

A copy installed that way does not update itself. You would be re-downloading it by hand on every release, so use the store if your machine lets you.

Step 2: how it gets your resume and your plan

The extension has no account of its own. A content script that runs on involveresume.com, and on no other site, hands over the session the website already holds. From there the extension reads its own profile row from the database directly, under row-level security.

That matters for a reason that is easy to miss: the plan is not a flag the page sends. A browser console posting a plan at the extension would not change anything, because the answer comes back from the server every time.

A positive answer is cached for fifteen minutes so that filling six forms in a row is six local reads. With no network at all, a positive answer stays usable for a day and the popup says it was checked earlier. A refusal is never cached, so an upgrade takes effect immediately.

The button that fills a form needs Scan, Build & Apply, Pro Max or a campus licence. If your account does not have it, the popup says so and offers a button that opens the pricing page rather than leaving you to work out which of four tiers is being asked for.

Step 3: your first score

Open a job posting on a board you use. Open the popup and press Show my match score here.

Chrome asks for that one site inside the click. From then on, every posting you open there carries the same score the website gives it: the number out of 100, the verdict, the required items your CV can and cannot evidence, and the two or three gaps that matter.

Where you have more than one CV, the badge scores all of them against that posting in one pass, ranks them, and opens on the best. The document to send is named rather than guessed at.

The score is worked out on your machine by the same engine the website runs. The advert goes to the extension's own background worker, the number comes back, and your resume does not leave the browser.

It works on Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, SmartRecruiters, Personio, an employer's own careers page, and on school careers portals. Not by knowing each of them individually: a job advert is a thing the web already has a vocabulary for, and the reader reads the standard posting markup in both of its forms, with a small table of per-site adapters for boards that publish neither.

The permissions, and why each one exists

Out of the box there is no registered content script on any site except Involve's own. Not an allowlist, not a wildcard: no sites at all. The extension is inert on every page you visit until you grant a site.

A fill grant is also not a read grant. Letting the extension fill a form on a site does not start it reading every page you open there. The sites the reader runs on are their own list, written only by that switch in the popup, and turning it off or revoking the permission in the browser both stop it.

What the popup actually shows

Eight blocks, top to bottom.

1. Account. Your email and plan, or the reason the answer was no, with one button that fixes it.
2. This page. The hostname, the Fill this page button, and the result line after a fill.
3. Run a queue. A box for job addresses, one per line, the two modes, what is left today and this month for each, a consent tick for the sending mode, Start and Stop, a progress line and a log.
4. Match score on this page. The switch, and a Tailor this page in Involve button for when there is no score.
5. Resume on this device. How many roles were read, when it synced, and how many tracked applications came with it.
6. Saved answers. How many answers you have written that can be offered on the next form.
7. Last page filled. Host, time, and the count of fields filled, left blank and flagged.
8. Open Involve and Forget everything.

When it looks dead on a page

The extension draws a blank in several situations, and they are not the same problem.

The last row was a real failure and it is worth knowing the shape of it. Chrome grants a host permission only inside a user gesture, so a queue started without asking left tailored documents sitting in the Downloads folder and never reached the form. The Start button now asks for every site in the queue in the same click, and a missing grant is reported as itself rather than as an error string.

What it will not do, on any page

• It never submits a form from the toolbar button.
• It never overwrites a field you have already filled in.
• The toolbar button never ticks a checkbox or a radio for consent. Those boxes are yours. The unattended auto-apply run is the one exception, and only after you have turned on “Tick that box for me from now on” on the auto-apply screen; leave it off and the run stops at the box instead.
• It never answers a work authorisation, visa, citizenship, clearance, criminal record, disability, veteran, ethnicity, gender or date of birth question. If you have answered one before, it is replayed only with a red outline and a note telling you to check it.
• It leaves a required field it has no answer for blank and marks it, because a silently wrong answer is worse than a visible gap.

Install it, sync one resume, and turn the score on for the one board you open most. That is fifteen minutes of setup for something you will use on every posting after it. Start from the extension screen.