Resume Tailor

Resume Tailor is a free agent skill maintained by Scopeful. It teaches an AI coding agent such as Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf or Codex how to drive this tool correctly, so you do not have to re-explain it every session. Every published Scopeful skill is free and the install command is public, with no sign-in required. Scopeful also tracks hand-verified USD pricing for 39 AI creative tools at https://www.scopeful.org/tools.

Tailor your resume or CV to a specific job.

Tags: resume, job-search

Reference

name: resume-tailor description: Use this skill whenever the user wants a resume or CV adapted to a specific job. Triggers include "tailor my resume to this job", "will my CV pass the ATS", "rewrite my resume for this posting", "cover letter for this role", or pasting a job description together with a resume. Produces a gap analysis, a tailored ATS-safe resume, and an optional cover letter.

Resume Tailor

A resume tailored to the posting beats a better resume sent generically. This skill does the tailoring honestly: it matches language and surfaces relevant experience — it never invents experience.

ATS behavior current as of 2026: major systems (Workday, Greenhouse, iCIMS, Lever, Ashby) use semantic matching, not raw keyword counting. Keyword stuffing now actively hurts. One specific, quantified line in the employer's vocabulary outscores five repetitions of a buzzword.

Hard rules

1. Never fabricate. No invented titles, dates, tools, or metrics. If a required skill is absent, say so in the gap analysis — don't paper over it.
2. Numbers need sources. Quantify only what the user actually tells you. Ask: "roughly how many people/users/€ did this involve?" — users always know numbers they forgot to write down.
3. The user's voice, cleaned up. Punchy fragments, active verbs, no "responsible for".

Workflow

1. Parse the job posting

Extract: 5–8 hard requirements (skills, years, tools), 3–4 soft signals (team size, pace, domain), the employer's exact vocabulary ("client partners" vs "customers", "GTM" vs "marketing"), and the job title as written.

2. Gap analysis (show before rewriting)

STRONG MATCH: [requirements the resume clearly proves]
WEAK MATCH:   [present but buried or in different words]
MISSING:      [not in the resume — ask the user; they may have it undocumented]

Only proceed after the user reacts — the MISSING list usually surfaces experience they forgot.

3. Rewrite

• Order by relevance to THIS job: summary → skills block → experience. Within each role, the most relevant bullet goes first (ATS and humans both weight first bullets highest).
• Place each proven requirement in up to three spots: the skills block, the summary, and one evidence bullet. Three mentions max — more reads as stuffing.
• Mirror the posting's vocabulary where truthful: if they say "stakeholder management" and the resume says "worked with other teams", use their phrase.
• Bullet formula: verb + what + scale + outcome. "Cut invoice processing from 3 days to 4 hours by scripting the reconciliation step (≈120 invoices/week)."
• Summary: 2–3 lines written for this role, containing the posting's job title verbatim.
• Cut ruthlessly: roles >10 years old compress to one line; irrelevant achievements go regardless of how proud the user is. Target 1 page under 10 years' experience, 2 pages max otherwise.

4. ATS-safe formatting

• Single column. No sidebars, tables, text boxes, icons, or headshots — multi-column templates are the top parsing failure.
• Standard section headers exactly: "Summary", "Experience", "Skills", "Education". Creative headers ("My Journey") drop whole sections in parsers.
• Standard fonts, real bullet characters, dates as "Jan 2023 – Present" consistently.
• PDF is fine for modern ATS (and preserves layout); offer .docx only if the posting demands it.
• Never hide white-text keywords — modern systems flag it as fraud.

5. Deliverables

• Tailored resume as .docx or PDF (use the docx skill / document tooling — not a text dump).
• Change log: 5 lines on what moved and why.
• On request, a cover letter: 3 paragraphs, ≤250 words — hook naming the role + the one most relevant achievement with numbers + why this company specifically (from their site/posting, researched, not flattery boilerplate).

What to tell the user plainly

• If they're missing >50% of hard requirements, say the honest odds and suggest which adjacent roles the resume IS strong for.
• Tailoring is per-job. Offer to save this as a base template so the next posting takes 5 minutes.