sxsphinxstack

Skills / Resume review

Resume review

Review an existing resume line by line. What a screener sees in six seconds, what to cut, what needs evidence. Use when they say "review my resume", "is my resume good", or before they submit anywhere.

Use this skill. Nothing to install.

Open in ChatGPT Open in Claude prefilled and ready; just hit send
for Gemini, Copilot, or Cursor: paste it, then say "use the resume review skill"

Don't have an agent?  ·  Raw file: skills/resume-review.md

Watch the first two minutes

This is how a session goes, including the part where you ask for the truth. Click through it.

​(pastes the skill + resume) review my resume. i keep applying and hearing nothing back
I'll read it the way a screener does first: six seconds. Here's what registered in mine: your name, an "Objective" paragraph, and a wall of text in the middle. I never reached your projects, and your projects are the good part. Fixable today.
be honest, is it bad?
The layout is hurting you more than the content. The two-column design breaks ATS parsing, the font is down to 9 points to cram everything in, and the objective paragraph makes no claim a stranger can check. The material underneath is better than the page makes it look. Ready for the line pass?
ok but don't just trash everything, i worked hard on this
Every verdict comes with a reason and a repair we make on the spot; nothing gets trashed without a fix. First bullet: "Responsible for social media for the robotics club." What did you actually do, concretely, in a normal week?
i ran the club instagram. posted 3 times a week, made all the graphics myself
Then say that: "Ran the robotics club Instagram: three posts a week, all graphics mine." Same fact, now checkable. Rewritten, next. "Passionate self-starter" is an aspiration verb wearing a bullet point; unless there's an action underneath it, it dies. What's the story behind it?

Scripted example of a real session.

What if the review just tears my resume apart?

The bluntness is the kindness: you are about to send this page to strangers who will never explain their no. But every verdict arrives with its reason and its repair, made in the same sitting with your yes. Rewording a weak line uses only facts you supply; when a claim has no evidence behind it, the verdict is cut it or go build the evidence, never invent a number. And if the review guts most of the page, the skill hands off to a rebuild instead of leaving you in the rubble:

Build resume, from the interview up Tailor for one posting next Portfolio page for the links

What you end up with

Every line carrying a verdict, and every verdict applied to the file before you stop. Here is a slice of a review mid-session: four lines from one resume and what happened to each.

Example
LINE PASS — four verdicts
from a real-shaped session; one verdict per line, applied immediately
KEEP 1
"Built the club's meeting-notes site; 22 members use it weekly  ·  github.com/dev/club-notes"
Specific, true, and a stranger can click the link. Untouched.
REWRITE 2
"Responsible for social media" → "Ran the robotics club Instagram: three posts a week, all graphics mine"
A real thing said weakly. The interview surfaced the facts; the reword states them.
NEEDS EVIDENCE 3
"Skills: Python, SQL, machine learning"
No other line on the page supports SQL or ML. Supply evidence now, or those two move to Cut.
CUT 4
"Objective: seeking a challenging position where I can leverage my skills..."  ·  "References available upon request"
Neither survives two minutes of interview questioning. Both gone; the space goes to projects.
  1. Keep has a bar. Specific, true, and carrying a link or a checkable fact. Lines that clear it are left alone.
  2. Rewrites use only what happened. The skill asks what you actually did and rewords to the fact. Aspiration words like "passionate" become action verbs or die.
  3. Needs-evidence is the honest category. The gaps that survive the session go on a short list, and the fix for each is something to build. The skill will not paper over a gap with phrasing.
  4. Cuts free the six seconds. Objectives paragraphs, word-cloud skills, and middle-school entries spend the screener's attention on nothing. Removing them is the fastest improvement on most pages.

Questions people actually ask

Is this free?

The skill is free, no account, no catch. The agent you paste it into may or may not be: Gemini has the widest free tier, and the free plans of ChatGPT, Claude, and Copilot can all run it in a chat.

Will it rewrite my resume for me?

It rewords weak phrasing using facts you confirm, with your yes on each change. What it will not do is invent: no added metrics, no upgraded titles, no skills you cannot defend. When a line needs evidence that does not exist, the verdict is to cut it or go build the evidence.

What does ATS-safe actually mean?

Applicant tracking systems parse your resume into a database before a human sees it. Multi-column layouts, graphics, and unusual fonts scramble that parsing, so your best line can arrive as garbage. The review flags these layout problems in the first pass and fixes them with you on the spot.

My resume is fine. Do I still need a review?

The six-second pass costs you nothing and tells you what a screener actually sees, which is regularly not what the writer sees. If every line earns a Keep, you walk away with a fresh PDF and confirmation. Most pages lose at least the objective paragraph.

How is this different from build-resume or tailor-resume?

Review works on a page that already exists and judges it line by line. Build starts from an interview when there is no page or the review gutted it. Tailor adapts a clean page to one specific posting. They chain: review first, then tailor for the job you want.

Where to go from here

Page cleaned up? Aim it at a real posting:

Tailor your resume Cover letter Interview prep

Left with a needs-evidence list? Build the missing proof:

Discord bot your server uses Price-drop watcher on a schedule Browser game at a URL
Curious? Read the full skill — the exact instructions your agent gets 
---
name: resume-review
category: resume
description: Review an existing resume line by line. What a screener sees in six seconds, what to cut, what needs evidence. Use when they say "review my resume", "is my resume good", or before they submit anywhere.
---

# resume-review

Review a resume that already exists, the way a screener
and then a skeptical interviewer would. The kindness is in the
bluntness: they are about to send this to strangers who will not
explain why they said no. Done means every problem you can fix
together is fixed, and the ones you cannot are named.

## Ground rules

- Verdicts with reasons, line by line. "This bullet says nothing a
  stranger can check" beats "looks pretty good overall". Never
  soften a real problem into a suggestion.
- Fixes use only material that is true. Rewording weak phrasing is
  in scope; inventing a metric to strengthen a bullet is not. When
  a line needs evidence that does not exist, the verdict is "cut
  or go build the evidence", not "add a number".
- Fix as you go. Each verdict comes with the repair, made now with
  their yes — this is a working session, not a report.

## The six-second pass

First, read it the way a screener does — six seconds, then
verdict. Report exactly what registered: the name, the first
section header, maybe two bullets, whether it looked crowded.
Then the layout facts that decide the six seconds: over one page,
dense walls of text, tiny fonts, columns or graphics that break
ATS parsing, an unprofessional email address, a photo. Each is a
fix made now.

## The line pass

Go bullet by bullet. For each line, one verdict:

- Keep — specific, true, and carries a link or checkable fact.
- Rewrite — a real thing said weakly. "Responsible for social
  media" hides "ran the club account, three posts a week"; ask
  what actually happened and reword to the fact. Aspiration verbs
  ("passionate", "motivated") become evidence-backed action verbs or are removed.
- Needs evidence — a claim with nothing behind it. A skills line
  no other line supports, a project with no link, an achievement
  with no artifact. They either supply the evidence now or the
  line moves to Cut.
- Cut — objectives paragraphs, word-cloud skills, "references
  available", middle-school entries, anything they could not
  discuss for two minutes in an interview.

Also check the spine: dates consistent and gap-free or gaps
ownable, tenses consistent, zero typos (read it aloud), contact
links all working.

## Done

- Every line carries a verdict, and every Keep/Rewrite/Cut is
  applied to the file
- One page, ATS-safe, links tested, exported to fresh PDF
- A short honest list of Needs-evidence gaps that survive — with
  the fix for each being something to build, not something to
  phrase (https://sphinxstack.com/skills/)
- If the review removed most of the page, hand off to build-resume
  and rebuild from the interview up

If they are targeting one specific posting, run tailor-resume next
on the newly cleaned file.