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Grade your resume against 6 explainable checks before a recruiter does.

Paste your resume below. Add the job title you want (optional) for a keyword match. Nothing leaves this tab.

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Read this before you trust the number

This grader reads plain text only. It cannot see fonts, colour, a logo, or a real multi-column layout the way an actual ATS parser or a recruiter's eye would — a resume that looks clean here might still hide a table in the original file. Keyword matching is a rough proxy for relevance, not a guarantee any specific ATS will rank a resume higher: modern parsers use more nuance than a keyword count, and this tool cannot replicate that.

  • Bullet and role detection is heuristic — a resume with an unusual format may be parsed imperfectly. Read the annotated copy below and use your judgement over the score.
  • Keyword fit only scores against a library of twelve common roles. An unmatched title is marked "not scored," never silently zeroed — the total then rescales out of the remaining 84 points.
  • A score here is not a promise of interviews. It measures craft mechanics that correlate with faster screening, not whether your experience fits the role.

Length and density

Word count, estimated pages, bullets and roles appear here once you paste a resume.

The useful part

Your resume, annotated

Every quantified win, weak opener, cliché, over-long bullet and missing number, marked up in place — five different line treatments, because colour alone is never enough. Hover or focus a mark for a one-line note.

The marked-up copy of your resume appears here once you paste one above.

Second opinion

Your three weakest bullets, scaffolded

A structured rewrite scaffold — [verb] + [what] + [number] + [outcome] — built from your own words where possible. This is a scaffold, not a rewrite service: it prompts you for what's missing rather than inventing a claim about your work.

Grade a resume with at least one weak bullet and its top three appear here.

Methodology

How the 100 points break down

Six dimensions summing to 100. Every rule below runs on the text you paste — the word lists, thresholds and keyword library are all published on this page.

  1. 1

    Impact and evidence — the proof a bullet earns its place (24 pts)

    Scored as the share of bullets containing a number, a percentage, a currency figure or a stated timeframe — the parts of a line that prove something actually happened. Duty-listing phrases like responsible for, tasked with and duties included pull points back down, because a description of a job is not evidence of doing it well.

  2. 2

    Strong openings — the first word of every bullet (16 pts)

    Rewards bullets that open with a past-tense achievement verb — led, built, cut, launched and around sixty others — against a published list. Weak openers (worked on, assisted, helped, responsible for) cost a smaller, separate penalty.

  3. 3

    ATS readability — six plain-text signals (18 pts)

    Six binary checks, three points each: a findable contact block, no tab or repeated-wide-gap column signals, section headers that map to a standard set, at least one recognisable date pattern, no icon or symbol characters, and no unreasonably long unwrapped lines. Each failure is named plainly, not just scored.

  4. 4

    Length and density — words, pages, bullets per role (14 pts)

    Targets 400–800 words for a resume with three or fewer distinct roles detected, up to 1,200 for a longer career — with 500 words used as the rough per-page estimate. Roles with more than six bullets, and individual bullets over 30 words, both cost points.

  5. 5

    Keyword fit and craft penalties — two modifiers (16 + 12 pts)

    Keyword fit (16 pts) only runs when a target job title matches one of twelve roles in the library; otherwise it is marked "not scored" and excluded from the denominator rather than zeroed. Craft (12 pts) starts full and deducts for first-person pronouns, résumé clichés, inconsistent tense, "references available on request," an objective statement, common misspellings, and more than one exclamation mark.

What this model is built on

  • Recruiter screening time — InterviewPal's data study "How Long Recruiters Actually Spend Reading Your Resume" (August 2025, 4,289 resume reviews across 312 recruiters and hiring managers in the US, UK and Southeast Asia) found an average initial scan of 11.2 seconds. ResumeGo's 2024 recruiter survey (January–March 2024, 418 US hiring professionals) found 47% spend 30 seconds to a minute on a first pass. Both point the same direction: bullets are scanned, not read, which is why evidence has to be visible in the first few words.
  • ATS parsing of tables and columns — Jobscan, "Why ATS Tables and Columns Break Your Resume Parsing" (2026): most parsers read a resume linearly, left to right, so a genuine multi-column layout or table can scramble the order text is extracted in, or skip fields entirely. This tool cannot see real layout in a text paste — it can only flag signals (tab characters, repeated wide gaps) that suggest one was used. A pipe character on its own is not flagged — it's almost always a deliberate, ATS-safe delimiter, not evidence of real columns.
  • Length by experience level — the current run of 2025–2026 career-advice guidance (Monster, Resume Worded and others) converges on one page under roughly five years of experience, with two pages accepted from about seven to ten years onward. This is a repeated practitioner convention, not a controlled study.
  • Bullets per role — current guidance (Teal, Kickresume, Extern and others) converges on roughly three to six bullets per role, weighted toward the top of that range for the most recent or relevant job and down for older ones.
  • Objective vs. summary — 2025–2026 career-advice consensus (The Interview Guys, Extern and others) is that a professional summary generally outperforms an objective statement once a candidate has a track record, while an objective remains reasonable for entry-level candidates, career changers, or people returning after a gap. The craft deduction here is a prompt to check that fit, not a rule that always applies.

None of this has been tested against your specific applications, your specific ATS, or a specific recruiter's habits — no free tool honestly could be. Every word list used for scoring — strong verbs, weak openers, duty phrases, clichés, misspellings, the 12-role keyword library — is published in this page's source, so you or a model reading it can check exactly what triggered a deduction.

Questions people ask about resumes

What makes a good resume in 2026?

A good resume proves outcomes, not duties. Every bullet should show what changed because you did the work — a number, a percentage, a dollar figure or a timeframe — instead of describing a responsibility. It opens with a strong past-tense verb, stays inside a normal length band for your experience, and uses section headers and dates a parser can actually read. Polish matters far less than evidence.

How long should a resume be?

One page for most people with under five years of experience; two pages is normal and accepted once you're past roughly seven to ten years, according to the current run of 2025–2026 career-advice guidance. In word terms, this tool targets 400–800 words for shorter careers and up to 1,200 for longer ones. Length itself is not the point — a tight one-page resume beats a padded two-page one every time.

What is an ATS and how do I get past it?

An applicant tracking system (ATS) is the software that stores and often parses your resume before a human opens it. Most parsers read text linearly, left to right, so multi-column layouts and tables can scramble the order of your information or skip fields entirely. You get past it by using standard section headers, a single-column layout, recognisable date formats, and keywords that genuinely appear in the job description — not by tricks.

How many bullet points per job?

Roughly three to six per role is the range that shows up consistently across current resume guidance — your most recent or most relevant job can run toward six, older or less relevant roles should shrink toward two or three. More than six per role usually means duties are creeping back in alongside the real achievements. Quality beats quantity: five bullets with real numbers outperform fifteen generic ones.

Should I include a summary or an objective?

A short professional summary — what you offer — generally outperforms an objective statement — what you want — once you have a track record to point to. Objectives still make sense for genuine entry-level candidates, career changers, or people returning after a gap, where there isn't yet a track record to summarise. This tool flags an objective section as a craft deduction, but treat that as a prompt to check it fits your situation, not an absolute rule.

Common follow-ups

Does my resume get uploaded anywhere?

No. The grader is a JavaScript file running in your browser tab. There is no server call, no file upload, no account, and no storage beyond the current tab. If you copy the result link, your resume text is encoded in the URL — treat that link the way you'd treat the resume itself.

Why did my resume score lower than I expected?

Usually one of two things: too few bullets carry a number, or too many open with a duty-listing phrase like "responsible for." Check the annotated copy above the method section — it marks the exact words the score is built from. A resume can also score lower simply because it's short on bullets to grade; a five-bullet resume has less room to average out one weak line than a fifteen-bullet one.

I have a PDF, not plain text — will this still work?

Copy the text out of your PDF and paste it here — most PDF viewers support select-all and copy. What you paste is exactly what an ATS's text extraction would see, which makes this a reasonable proxy — but a genuinely complex layout can paste out of order even when it looks fine on screen, so also check the pasted text reads in the right sequence before you trust the score.

My job title isn't matching — why?

Keyword fit only scores against a library of twelve common roles — software engineer, product manager, marketing manager, sales rep, data analyst, designer, project manager, accountant, nurse, teacher, customer success and operations manager. A title outside that list is marked "not scored" rather than guessed at or zeroed, and the total rescales out of the remaining 84 points so it stays comparable.

Next

A sharp resume still needs the right target.

A well-graded resume aimed at the wrong role wastes both. Pressure-test the direction, then rehearse the conversation it earns you.

The Career Pivot Quiz Whether a career change makes sense for you right now, and where to point it. Interview Question Generator Practice questions built from your actual target role, not a generic bank. Free tools as a search strategy What the evidence supports, what it does not, and how to build the thing.