Alba Hornero is the founder of CandyCV and the editorial lead behind its content about resumes, employability, ATS, job boards, resume tools, hiring technology, interview preparation, and AI applied to recruiting. Her work helps people understand how modern hiring processes actually work so they can build stronger, better-focused applications that are more prepared for the digital environments where many opportunities are managed today.
Before creating CandyCV, she worked as a product director at Factorial, where she managed products related to recruiting and talent management. From that position, she led the development of an ATS and other HR software solutions, researched competitors, worked with job board integrations, and interviewed hiring leaders from companies in different sectors to understand how they manage applications, how they use recruiting technology, and what signals they usually need to decide whether an application moves forward in the process.
That experience gives her a particularly useful and valuable perspective for writing about resumes and job search. Alba does not analyze the resume only from theory or recycled advice with no context, but from pattern detection and practical knowledge of how the tools between a candidate and a company are designed and used. She has worked with the logic of ATS, job boards, forms, job postings, hiring workflows, and the recruiting and business needs of the people making hiring decisions.
That is why, for Alba, a resume is a key piece of information that gets uploaded to platforms, interpreted by systems, reviewed by recruiters, compared with other applications, and can shape the questions that come later in an interview. Her approach connects resume content, technical compatibility, professional positioning, and interview preparation as parts of the same application.
CandyCV comes precisely from that intersection of product, content, and recruiting-technology experience: a tool for creating and improving resumes, but also an editorial project that clearly explains how resumes work inside modern hiring processes and helps people make better decisions about their application.
Training, talks, and public education
In addition to writing at CandyCV, Alba takes part in training, educational spaces, and collaborations related to resumes, employability, ATS, job boards, hiring technology, and job searching.
She has delivered sessions at universities, alumni programs, and career-guidance spaces to explain how modern hiring processes work, what role ATS and job boards play, how keywords are used in a resume, and which myths are worth avoiding when preparing an application.
She has also developed collaborations with recruiting-technology companies, such as the collaboration between CandyCV and Teamtailor, focused on helping candidates understand the language of talent and technology inside hiring processes. Teamtailor presents CandyCV as a tool that works on the resume through professional narrative, positioning in ATS and job boards, and adaptation to job postings.
Some published sessions and collaborations:
- 4th Cycle “Innovation in Talent Management” at the Universitat de València, with the talk “7 seconds and an ATS,” focused on resume screening, ATS myths, and practical recommendations for building a more effective resume.
- Florida Universitària Job Fair, with CandyCV / Alba Hornero taking part in a roundtable about career paths.
- Conference “Boost your CV and conquer the algorithms”, organized by the Mentors Club of the Faculty of Economics at the Universitat de València.
- CandyCV x Teamtailor: talent and technology finally speak the same language, a collaboration between CandyCV and Teamtailor about resumes, ATS, candidate experience, and technology-mediated hiring processes.
- “CV Optimization with Keywords” session at UNIR Alumni, about the importance of the words we choose in a resume because of how ATS lexical searches and filters work, while also warning that keywords are not the only thing that matters and must be contextualized.
These activities reinforce an important part of Alba's work: translating knowledge about hiring technology into explanations that are useful for people looking for work, career advisors, students, and professionals who support employability processes.
Editorial approach
Alba's editorial approach starts from the idea that a person looking for work needs sound criteria to make decisions, not quick tricks or task lists that lead nowhere.
That means positioning herself against two common extremes in employability content: selling fear as advice and turning viral tricks into professional strategy. Alba prioritizes explanations that are applicable, nuanced, and useful for hiring processes, even if that makes CandyCV's content less “viral-friendly.”
She also does not publish sponsored content or accept payment to recommend tools. Editorial recommendations at CandyCV are based on her own judgment, product analysis, and usefulness for the person looking for work.
See CandyCV's editorial methodology.
You can also read more about Alba's product-development philosophy and how it shapes CandyCV.
Topics she writes and teaches about
Alba writes about resumes, ATS, job boards, resume tools, LinkedIn, interview preparation, artificial intelligence applied to recruiting, and hiring technology. Her approach starts from a central idea: an application is not just a document, but a professional information system that needs to work across different contexts, from the resume to the interview.
Resumes and application strategy
Alba analyzes the resume as a professional positioning tool, not as a template to fill in. She writes about how to decide what information to include, what to remove, how to order experience, how to show achievements, and how to adapt a resume to a professional goal without turning it into a decontextualized list of keywords.
The focus is on making the resume clearly show what a person can contribute, what kind of role their profile fits, and what evidence supports that fit.
Related reading:
- How to write an ATS-friendly resume that passes filters and gets interviews.
- How to write a resume without relevant work experience.
- How to tailor your resume to a job posting.
ATS, job boards, and hiring technology
Alba writes about how the systems between a candidate and a company work: ATS, job boards, application forms, integrations, databases, filters, automations, internal searches, and review workflows.
Her approach does not start from the fear of “being rejected by a robot,” but from understanding how application information moves: what data gets extracted from the resume, what information is entered into forms, how job postings are published, how applications are received, and how hiring teams may work with that information.
Her experience building recruiting technology lets her explain the limits, variations, and common misunderstandings around ATS compatibility, job boards, keywords, rankings, and automations with more rigor than the generic advice that usually circulates on the topic.
Related reading:
- What is an ATS and how does it affect your resume?
- What does it mean for a resume to be ATS-compatible?
- How to check whether your resume is compatible with ATS and job boards.
Resume tools and AI applied to employability
Alba analyzes resume tools through criteria of usefulness and integrity: technical compatibility, the quality of the content they encourage, editing ease, adaptability, transparency, and product reliability.
This includes specialized editors, design tools like Canva, word processors like Word, AI generators, and general chat tools used to write or adapt resumes. Her perspective is especially critical of products that use “ATS optimization” as a commercial promise without truly delivering it, and those that use AI for cosmetic rewrites that do not actually improve the application.
She also writes about artificial intelligence applied to hiring and employability: resume creation, tailoring to job postings, application screening, initial interviews, and career-guidance tools. The goal is not to reject AI, but to distinguish where it can help, where it oversimplifies, and what should not be delegated without judgment.
Related reading:
- Resume tools: types and differences.
- How to choose a good resume tool.
- The best tools for making a resume.
LinkedIn, professional visibility, and job search
Alba also writes about LinkedIn, professional visibility, and job search from a practical angle: how recruiters find you, how your profile is interpreted, what signals your trajectory sends, and how to connect your resume, LinkedIn profile, and application.
LinkedIn is not treated as just another social network, but as an environment where professional positioning, talent search, reputation, networking, job postings, recruiter messages, and public signals about a person's experience all coexist. That is why her LinkedIn content connects how LinkedIn Recruiter works and how recruiters search for profiles with profile optimization and professional positioning.
Related reading:
- How to optimize your LinkedIn profile so recruiters find you.
- How to optimize your job-board profile to access better opportunities.
Interview preparation and defending your professional profile
Alba writes and teaches about interview preparation as a natural continuation of the application. The interview is not treated as a phase isolated from the resume, but as the moment when a person has to support their positioning, explain their professional decisions, demonstrate skills, and turn the information in the resume into a credible conversation.
Preparing for an interview is not just about rehearsing answers, but about understanding what evidence is worth defending, what doubts the profile may raise, which professional stories best explain the fit, and how to answer without falling into generic responses.
Related reading:
Myths about resumes, templates, ATS, and hiring processes
An important part of her work is dismantling myths that lead people to make poor decisions: opaque automatic scores, supposedly “ATS-friendly” templates with no criteria behind them, viral tricks, exaggerated fear of ATS, obsession with making the resume one page long, or too much trust in tools that promise to improve an application without understanding it.
In a market full of quick advice about resumes, keywords, algorithms, interviews, and AI, CandyCV prioritizes explanations that are useful, verifiable, and applicable to current processes.
Related reading:
- ATS-compatible resume templates.
- Modern and professional resume templates.
- Why not to make your resume with Canva.
- How many pages should your resume have?
Where to follow Alba Hornero's work
You can read Alba's work on the CandyCV blog, where she publishes guides, methods, and comparisons about resumes, ATS, job boards, resume tools, LinkedIn, interviews, employability, and AI applied to hiring.
She also shares analysis and resources on her LinkedIn profile, in addition to CandyCV's channels on YouTube and TikTok.
For collaboration proposals, interviews, training, press requests, or editorial questions related to content published on CandyCV, you can contact Alba via alba@candycv.com, the press page, or LinkedIn.