Resume Review

Resume Review

Deliver critical, prioritised feedback on a resume, grounded in documented behaviour of automated screening systems and recruiter reading patterns. Be a tough reviewer, not a cheerleader: the user needs findings they can act on, ranked by how likely each is to cost them an interview. Do not rewrite the resume unless asked — review first, offer the rewrite after.

Step 1 — Ingest

1. Locate the resume file (ask if ambiguous). Extract full text:
   • .docx: unzip and parse word/document.xml — join all <w:t> runs per <w:p> paragraph (pandoc/python-docx often absent; stdlib zipfile + regex works everywhere). Also note structural elements: <w:tbl> (tables), <w:drawing>/<w:pict> (images/text boxes), headers/footers (word/header*.xml, word/footer*.xml), <w:pageBreakBefore>/<w:br w:type="page"/> (page structure).
   • .pdf: Read the file directly (the Read tool renders PDFs); note any text that appears only in images.
2. If a target job description is available (file, URL, or pasted), extract its hard requirements, repeated nouns/verbs, and exact technology names — these are the keyword corpus for Step 3. If no JD is provided, ask whether the review should be generic or targeted, and proceed generically if no answer is needed.

Step 2 — ATS / machine-parsing audit

Applicant tracking systems (Workday, Greenhouse, Lever, Taleo, iCIMS, SuccessFactors) parse the resume into structured fields before a human sees it. Flag every violation found, with the specific location:

• Contact info in header/footer — many parsers skip headers/footers entirely; name, email, phone must be in the body.
• Tables — multi-column tables frequently scramble reading order or drop cells in older parsers. A simple date/role/company summary table is moderate risk; skills or experience laid out in tables is high risk. Recommend tab stops or plain paragraphs where risk is high.
• Text boxes, images, icons, charts — invisible to parsers. Skill-level bars/graphics are worst: they convey nothing to the machine and waste space for the human.
• Multi-column page layouts — column-unaware parsers read straight across, interleaving unrelated text.
• Non-standard section headings — parsers field-map from headings. Safest set: "Summary", "Experience"/"Work Experience"/"Career Summary", "Education", "Skills", "Certifications". Flag creative headings ("My Journey", "What I Bring") and suggest standard equivalents.
• Dates — must be consistent (MMM YYYY – MMM YYYY recommended), attached to each role, in a predictable position. Flag mixed formats (e.g. "Nov 2019 – Dec 2019" vs "2025 - Present"), en-dash vs hyphen inconsistency, and missing months (some ATSs assume January, distorting tenure).
• File format — .docx and text-based PDF both parse well in modern systems; flag scanned/image PDFs, .pages, unusual fonts, and ligature-heavy typefaces.
• Fancy characters — smart quotes, arrows, emoji, box-drawing characters can garble extraction; keep to plain punctuation and standard bullets.
• Acronyms — keyword matchers are often literal. Spell out AND abbreviate on first use ("continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD)") for any term the JD uses in either form.
• Length as parsed text — verify no content is lost when reduced to plain text (everything important must survive the extraction you just performed — if you couldn't read it, neither can the ATS).

Step 3 — Keyword & JD alignment (skip if no JD)

Keyword screens and recruiter searches are literal-match driven:

1. Build a table: each hard requirement / named technology / repeated phrase from the JD → present in resume? (exact term, synonym only, or absent). Match on the JD's vocabulary, not the resume's — "developer productivity" ≠ "engineering velocity" to a keyword filter.
2. Check placement: keywords carry most weight in the top third of page 1 and in role bullets (context-weighted), least in a skills dump. A keyword that appears only in the skills list looks stuffed; one evidenced inside an achievement bullet scores with both machine and human.
3. Flag missing must-haves loudly, including honest gaps the user should address in a cover letter rather than pad into the resume. Never advise fabrication or invisible-text stuffing — both are detectable and disqualifying.
4. Check the job title echo: recruiters search by title. If the target title (or its nearest true equivalent) appears nowhere, recommend working it into the summary line honestly ("… engineering-productivity leadership …").

Step 4 — Human skim audit

Eye-tracking studies (Ladders 2018: ~7.4 seconds first-pass skim, F/E-shaped scan pattern) define what actually gets read: top of page 1, left edge, first words of bullets, titles/companies/dates.

• Six-second test: read only the name, summary first line, section headings, job titles/companies, and the first 3–4 words of each bullet on page 1. State what impression survives. If the core positioning doesn't land in that pass, say so — this is the single most important finding.
• Top third of page 1 must contain: who they are, seniority, the 2–3 differentiators for the target role, and location/work-rights if relevant.
• Bullet quality — for every experience bullet check:
  • Leads with a strong past-tense action verb (led, built, cut, launched, shipped) — not "responsible for", "involved in", "helped with", "worked on".
  • Quantified (Google's XYZ formula: "Accomplished X as measured by Y, by doing Z"). Count the ratio of quantified to unquantified bullets per role; below ~half quantified is a finding.
  • One idea per bullet, ≤2 lines rendered; flag 3+ line bullets and multi-clause chains.
  • Accomplishment, not duty. "Managed a team of 9" is a duty; "Grew team 1→5 while launching 4 devices" is an accomplishment.
• Density & whitespace — walls of text lose skimmers; flag paragraph blocks >4 lines inside experience sections, and pages with no visual rest.
• Recency weighting — most-relevant detail should be in the most recent 2–3 roles; roles >10 years old deserve 1–4 lines each. Flag inverted weighting.
• Length — 2 pages is the norm for <15 years' experience; 3–4 tolerable for 20+ year senior/executive resumes if pages 1–2 carry the sell. Flag anything the last pages contain that the first page depends on.
• Buzzword audit — flag empty adjectives (seasoned, dynamic, results-driven, passionate, synergy, guru, rockstar) unless immediately evidenced. Flag first-person pronouns if usage is inconsistent.
• Red flags a recruiter will probe: unexplained gaps >3 months, many short stints without context, title inflation vs company size, missing months on dates, inconsistent tense (past tense for past roles, present for current), typos, mixed spelling variants (organise/organize).

Step 5 — Truth & consistency pass

• Cross-check every date, title, and company against ALL occurrences (summary table vs section headings vs LinkedIn if provided). Any mismatch is a top-priority finding — screeners treat inconsistency as dishonesty.
• Check arithmetic: "20+ years", team sizes, percentages that must reconcile.
• Flag claims that invite a probe the user may not want ("CTO" at a company where they're the only engineer — defensible, but be ready).

Step 6 — Report

Structure the output:

1. Verdict (2–3 sentences): would this resume survive (a) the ATS parse, (b) the 7-second skim, (c) the keyword screen for the stated target?
2. Scorecard — one line each, score /10 with a one-clause reason: ATS parseability · Keyword alignment · Skim impact (page 1) · Achievement evidence (quantification) · Consistency/accuracy · Length & structure.
3. Findings, ranked — numbered, most-likely-to-cost-an-interview first. Each: the problem, where (page/section/quote a few words), why it matters (which system or behaviour it trips), and the concrete fix. Aim for the top 5–10; put minor nits in a short bullet list at the end.
4. What's working — brief; only genuinely strong elements, so the user doesn't "fix" them.
5. Offer (don't perform) the follow-up: apply fixes to the file, tailor to a specific JD, or re-run the review after edits.

Calibration: be direct. "This bullet says nothing a screener can use" is more useful than "consider strengthening". If the resume is strong, say so and dig for second-order improvements rather than inventing problems — but a review that finds nothing is almost always a review that didn't look hard enough.