Prompts to Match Your Resume Keywords to a Job Post
A posting and a resume often describe the same work in 2 different vocabularies — you wrote "client onboarding", the posting says "customer implementation". These prompts line the 2 lists up and show which terms genuinely overlap, which are missing, and which you should leave alone because you have never done the thing. Both a person skimming and a keyword search work from the words on the page, so vocabulary is worth a pass of its own. A keyword you cannot back up in an interview still costs you more than a missing one.
Before you paste any of these
Split missing terms into 2 lists — Ask the model to separate things you have done under another name from things you have not done at all. Only the first list should change your resume, and it changes wording rather than content.
Use the posting's exact form — If it writes "A/B testing" and you wrote "split testing", use theirs — a person skimming and a keyword search both look for the words in front of them. Spell an acronym out once with the short form in parentheses so both spellings appear.
Put keywords inside real bullets — Ask for terms placed into sentences describing work you actually did, never appended as a keyword block at the bottom. A dense list of unattached nouns reads as padding and gives an interviewer nothing to ask about.
Skip the hidden-text tricks — White text, invisible keyword layers, and stuffed footers are a bad trade — you cannot control how any given parser treats hidden text, and a reader who notices one has a reason to doubt the rest. Plain text in a single-column layout parses cleanly in applicant tracking systems and survives a human reader too.
7 prompts to copy
Every prompt ends with the same rules: use only what you give it, and mark a missing number with a placeholder instead of guessing one.
You have found a posting worth applying to and want to know what it actually asks for before you open your resume
What to have ready
•The full text of the job posting
You are a hiring analyst. Below is a job posting I am applying to.
[PASTE THE FULL JOB POSTING]
Read only what is written there. Give me three lists in Markdown:
1. Hard requirements — the tools, languages, certifications, licenses, degrees, and years of experience the posting states as required.
2. Repeated language — words and phrases the posting uses more than once, with the count for each.
3. House vocabulary — the posting's own name for things that have common alternatives, for example what it calls the customer, the team, or the process.
For every term, quote the sentence it came from. Sort each list by how often the term appears. Do not add terms the posting does not contain, and do not tell me which ones I have — you have not seen my resume yet.
Rules — these override everything above:
- Use only the experience I give you. Do not invent employers, job titles, dates, degrees, certifications, skills, or metrics.
- If a number would strengthen a line and I have not given you one, write a placeholder like [X%] or [$X] for me to fill in. Do not estimate it.
- Do not add a tool, skill, or credential I did not list, however standard it is in my field.
- Rewrite, reorder, tighten and re-emphasize what is already there. Where I have given you too little to work with, ask me for it or leave [add detail].
Send this next
Now split those terms into the ones a resume can show through work I describe, and the ones that can only be shown by a credential or a date.
Open inCopies the prompt, then opens the assistant
You have a posting and a finished resume, and you want an honest line-by-line account of what matches
What to have ready
•The full text of the job posting
•Your current resume as plain text
Compare these two documents term by term.
JOB POSTING:
[PASTE THE POSTING]
MY RESUME:
[PASTE YOUR FULL RESUME TEXT]
Return one Markdown table with four columns: Term from posting | Where my resume says it | The words I used instead | Verdict.
Use exactly one of these four verdicts per row:
- Present, same wording.
- Present, different wording — quote both.
- Missing, but a line of mine suggests I did it — quote that line.
- Missing, and nothing in my resume touches it.
Cover every hard requirement and every term the posting repeats. Then list the fourth-category rows again on their own and say, based on how the posting words each one, which read as hard filters and which read as wish list. Do not rewrite any of my lines yet.
Rules — these override everything above:
- Use only the experience I give you. Do not invent employers, job titles, dates, degrees, certifications, skills, or metrics.
- If a number would strengthen a line and I have not given you one, write a placeholder like [X%] or [$X] for me to fill in. Do not estimate it.
- Do not add a tool, skill, or credential I did not list, however standard it is in my field.
- Rewrite, reorder, tighten and re-emphasize what is already there. Where I have given you too little to work with, ask me for it or leave [add detail].
Send this next
Take the rows marked Present, different wording and show me both versions side by side, so I can decide which wording is the honest one for what I actually did.
Open inCopies the prompt, then opens the assistant
Your experience fits the job but your resume describes it in different words than the posting uses
What to have ready
•The bullets from one role or section of your resume, exactly as you wrote them
•The full text of the job posting
Below is one section of my resume, exactly as I wrote it, and the posting I am targeting.
MY SECTION:
[PASTE THE BULLETS FROM ONE ROLE OR SECTION]
POSTING:
[PASTE THE POSTING]
Rewrite the section in Markdown. Where the posting and I are describing the same real work, use the posting's wording instead of mine.
Rules:
- Change vocabulary only. Every fact, tool, scope, and result has to be in what I pasted already.
- If a swap would change the meaning — a wider scope, a more senior verb, a tool I never named — do not make it.
- Keep the same number of bullets.
After the rewrite, give me two things: a two-column table of old phrase and new phrase, and a list headed Swaps I did not make, with one line on why each was a stretch.
Rules — these override everything above:
- Use only the experience I give you. Do not invent employers, job titles, dates, degrees, certifications, skills, or metrics.
- If a number would strengthen a line and I have not given you one, write a placeholder like [X%] or [$X] for me to fill in. Do not estimate it.
- Do not add a tool, skill, or credential I did not list, however standard it is in my field.
- Rewrite, reorder, tighten and re-emphasize what is already there. Where I have given you too little to work with, ask me for it or leave [add detail].
Send this next
Read the rewritten section back to me as a skeptical hiring manager and tell me which line now sounds borrowed rather than lived.
Claude: Claude often returns a rewrite this long as an artifact — a separate panel you can copy in one block, which is handy when the Markdown is going straight into an editor rather than being picked out of the chat.
Open inCopies the prompt, then opens the assistant
You are applying to several similar roles and want one base resume that speaks the language all of them share
What to have ready
•3 to 5 job postings you have saved for the same kind of role
•Your current resume as plain text
Here are the postings I have saved for the kind of role I am chasing, plus my current resume.
POSTING 1:
[PASTE]
POSTING 2:
[PASTE]
POSTING 3:
[PASTE]
MY RESUME:
[PASTE YOUR RESUME AS PLAIN TEXT]
Find the language these postings share, not what makes each one unusual. Return in Markdown:
1. A table of every term that appears in 2 or more postings: Term | How many postings use it | Already in my resume, yes or no.
2. The terms that appear in all of them, listed on their own — these are the ones my base resume should carry, if the work behind them is mine.
3. The terms that appear in one posting only, so I know to save those for that single application.
For anything marked no, do not write a line for me. Ask me one question about what I actually did that relates to it, and wait.
Rules — these override everything above:
- Use only the experience I give you. Do not invent employers, job titles, dates, degrees, certifications, skills, or metrics.
- If a number would strengthen a line and I have not given you one, write a placeholder like [X%] or [$X] for me to fill in. Do not estimate it.
- Do not add a tool, skill, or credential I did not list, however standard it is in my field.
- Rewrite, reorder, tighten and re-emphasize what is already there. Where I have given you too little to work with, ask me for it or leave [add detail].
Send this next
Start the questions with the term that appears in the most postings, and take them one at a time.
Open inCopies the prompt, then opens the assistant
You are about to spend an hour tailoring and want to know first whether a hard requirement rules you out
What to have ready
•The full text of the job posting
•Your certifications, licenses, and degrees
•The start and end dates of every role you have held
Pull every hard requirement out of this posting and build me a checklist.
POSTING:
[PASTE THE POSTING]
WHAT I HAVE:
[LIST YOUR CERTIFICATIONS, LICENSES, AND DEGREES, THEN THE START AND END DATES OF EACH ROLE]
Give me a Markdown table: Requirement | Stated as required or preferred | What I have | Met, partly met, or not met.
How to fill the last column:
- Years of experience: add up only the dates I gave you and show the arithmetic.
- Licenses and certifications: met only if I named that exact credential. A near neighbor is partly met, and you name the difference.
- Anything I did not mention is not met. Do not assume it on my behalf.
Then two short lists: requirements I do meet but have not stated clearly enough, and requirements I do not meet, each marked with whether the posting words it as a filter or a preference.
Rules — these override everything above:
- Use only the experience I give you. Do not invent employers, job titles, dates, degrees, certifications, skills, or metrics.
- If a number would strengthen a line and I have not given you one, write a placeholder like [X%] or [$X] for me to fill in. Do not estimate it.
- Do not add a tool, skill, or credential I did not list, however standard it is in my field.
- Rewrite, reorder, tighten and re-emphasize what is already there. Where I have given you too little to work with, ask me for it or leave [add detail].
Send this next
For the requirements I meet but state weakly, tell me exactly where on the resume each one should appear so a reader finds it in the first 10 seconds.
Open inCopies the prompt, then opens the assistant
You have finished a heavy tailoring pass and the resume has started to read like a word list
What to have ready
•The tailored version of your resume as plain text
•The job posting you tailored it to
Here is a resume I have already tailored to a posting. Tell me whether I overdid it.
MY TAILORED RESUME:
[PASTE IT]
THE POSTING:
[PASTE IT]
Read it the way a hiring manager reads, not the way software reads. Flag:
1. Any term repeated so often it reads as padding — give the count and every line it appears on.
2. Bullets that name a tool or method but never say what I did with it.
3. Items in my skills list that appear nowhere in my experience.
4. Sentences where the posting's phrasing has been dropped in and now reads unnaturally — quote the sentence, then give me a plain-English version.
Finish with a one-paragraph verdict: does this read like a person describing their work, or like a document written for a filter. Be blunt.
Rules — these override everything above:
- Use only the experience I give you. Do not invent employers, job titles, dates, degrees, certifications, skills, or metrics.
- If a number would strengthen a line and I have not given you one, write a placeholder like [X%] or [$X] for me to fill in. Do not estimate it.
- Do not add a tool, skill, or credential I did not list, however standard it is in my field.
- Rewrite, reorder, tighten and re-emphasize what is already there. Where I have given you too little to work with, ask me for it or leave [add detail].
Send this next
Give me the shortest set of cuts that fixes the padding without losing a term the posting genuinely requires.
Open inCopies the prompt, then opens the assistant
You are about to upload to an application portal and want to see the resume the parser sees
What to have ready
•The text you get when you select all and copy from your resume file
My resume goes into an applicant tracking system before a person sees it. Below is the plain text I get when I select all and copy from my resume file — roughly what the software receives.
[PASTE THE COPIED TEXT]
Tell me what survived:
1. Headings — list them in the order they appear. Flag any that arrived merged with other text, or that use a name whose common equivalent is plainer, and say what that equivalent is.
2. Reading order — does the text run top to bottom the way a resume should. Quote the first place it breaks.
3. Contact details — are name, email, phone, and location all present as plain text.
4. Losses — anything that looks like it came from a table, text box, header, or footer, or is simply missing.
5. Dates — list every date range and flag any that read ambiguously.
End with the fixes in priority order. Do not fill in anything that is missing; just tell me it is gone.
Rules — these override everything above:
- Use only the experience I give you. Do not invent employers, job titles, dates, degrees, certifications, skills, or metrics.
- If a number would strengthen a line and I have not given you one, write a placeholder like [X%] or [$X] for me to fill in. Do not estimate it.
- Do not add a tool, skill, or credential I did not list, however standard it is in my field.
- Rewrite, reorder, tighten and re-emphasize what is already there. Where I have given you too little to work with, ask me for it or leave [add detail].
Send this next
Rewrite my section headings as the plainest standard names that still describe what is in each section.
Open inCopies the prompt, then opens the assistant
More prompts that also cover match the posting language
The posting names more technologies than you have shipped with. You need to know which ones you can back with real work, which to foreground, and which gaps to answer honestly rather than paper over
I am a software engineer applying for the role below. Line up what I have already built against what this team is asking for.
Analyst postings tend to list the same tools, so stack overlap tells you little. You need to know whether this team wants a product analyst, a reporting owner, an analytics engineer or a risk modeler — and which of your work speaks to that
You are comparing a data analyst's resume against one job posting. Analytics postings tend to list the same tools, so stack overlap tells you little. Read for the job underneath the posting.
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