How to Tailor Your Resume to a Job Description: a Free 15-Minute Checklist
This is a plain method you can run today with a text editor and the job posting. No account, no tool, no sign-up. It is my own process, not a third-party score.
Step 1. Pull the keywords out of the posting (5 minutes)
- Paste the whole posting into a document. Include the "Nice to have" part.
- Highlight every named tool (for example Salesforce, SQL, Figma), every credential (PMP, CPA), and every phrase that repeats.
- Count repeats. Write down the 7 terms that appear most. These are your target keywords.
Step 2. Check where each keyword sits on your resume (5 minutes)
Make a small table. For each of the 7 terms, tick where it already appears.
| Keyword | In summary? | In skills list? | In a job bullet? |
|---|---|---|---|
| (term 1) | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| (term 2) | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| ... up to term 7 | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
A term missing from all three columns is the first thing to fix, but only if you genuinely have that skill (see the honesty rule below).
Step 3. Match the posting's wording (3 minutes)
If you did the work under a different name, use the posting's name for it. Three examples of the idea:
| Your resume says | Posting says | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Lead generation | Demand generation | If you did both, use both terms |
| CRM | Salesforce or HubSpot | Name the specific tool you used |
| Project management | Agile / Scrum | If you ran agile methods, say so |
Why this matters is a reasoning point, not a statistic: a screen that compares words can treat different names for the same work as a mismatch. ResumeAdapter's report of 10,000 scans says candidates were typically missing about 11 terms that matched their experience but were phrased differently (source: resumeadapter.com, a vendor of resume tools, so treat it as one company's data).
Step 4. Match the job title (1 minute)
Change the first line of your summary to name the exact job title in this posting, if it honestly describes you.
Step 5. Run the layout check (1 minute)
- ☐ Single column. No two-column table or sidebar.
- ☐ Standard section headings such as Experience, Education, Skills.
- ☐ Contact details in the body of the page, not in a header or image.
- ☐ No text inside pictures, icons or graphics.
- ☐ Each bullet starts with an action verb.
- ☐ At least one number (count, %, $, time) in your most recent role's bullets.
On layout, the same ResumeAdapter report says "single-column, single-layer resumes score 18 points higher on average than multi-column resumes for the same candidate." That is on that vendor's own 0 to 100 score, not an employer's system.
Bullet example (made-up, for illustration)
| Before | After |
|---|---|
| Helped with lead generation for the team | Ran demand generation campaigns across 3 channels; grew qualified leads 40% in 6 months |
The numbers in that example are invented to show the shape of a good bullet. Use your own real figures.
What this free page does not give you
It gives you the method. It does not give you a way to score your whole resume, a worked example, or fill-in templates. If you want those, I made a paid toolkit.
ATS Resume Toolkit: $27, 5 files
Plain-text markdown files you download and use on your own resume. Nothing is sent to anyone and I never see your resume.
- Self-scoring checklist. My own 57-point rubric (keywords 21, job title 6, formatting 8, quantified impact 8, structure 8, experience 6), with a priority fix order and score bands.
- Annotated before/after. A fictional resume (Marcus Okafor, not a real person) scored 20/57 before and 55/57 after with my rubric. Every bullet is annotated, plus a LinkedIn headline and About rewrite.
- Templates. A resume template and LinkedIn headline, About and skills templates.
- Keyword guide. The full 5-step extraction process, role-family keyword lists, and a longer synonym table.
- Readme. What to open first.
Honest limits: the score is my own rubric, not an employer's ATS score and not a third-party tool's score. There is no guarantee of interviews or ATS results.
Sources on this page: ResumeAdapter, "2026 ATS Rejection Report: 10,000 resume scans", https://www.resumeadapter.com/blog/2026-ats-rejection-report-10000-resume-scans. Everything else is my own method. No testimonials, no user counts.