A resume recruiters read: a pre-send checklist

A recruiter spends 30–40 seconds on the first scan of a resume. Here is a checklist to help yours get past that filter.

Structure

• Header: name, role, city or remote, contacts, one link to LinkedIn or GitHub.
• A three-line summary: who you are, your main expertise, how you are useful.
• Skills in groups: testing, tools, core technologies. This is where the ATS robot looks for the keywords from the job ad.
• Projects with results: the name, what it was, what you did, the outcome in numbers.

Common mistakes

• A list of duties instead of achievements (“did testing” vs “covered regression with 120 test cases and found 37 defects before release”).
• Forty listed technologies, which blur the profile. Keep only the ones you can really discuss in depth.
• Typos in the company name or tool names: an instant minus.
• A PDF with tables and charts that break ATS parsing. A simple single-column PDF is safer.

The final test

Read your resume as an interviewer would: in 30 seconds, can I tell who you are, what you are strong at and how you are useful? Run the resume through an AI tool and it will point out weak wording. And remember: a strong resume gets you the call, but confident answers on the call come from people who trained. An interview trainer →

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