Every content quality check, and how to pass it

Your resume is graded by 21 checks in total. Nine of them are completion checks, which ask whether the facts are there at all, and they are covered in Your resume score explained. The other 12 read how the resume is written, and this article covers every one of them.

The panel groups them as Impact and Brevity. A check is only marked as passing at exactly 100, so one sitting at 96 still lists what it wants from you.

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Which text gets read

The content checks read your professional summary, experience, projects, and volunteer entries, which are the four places you write in sentences. Word level underlines in the preview are drawn in those four places only.

Skills, education, certificates, awards, and publications are not read for wording issues, so nothing you write in them can cost you content points.

Impact

Quantifiable measurements (weight 20)

This is the heaviest content check. It counts what share of your bullets contain a measurement of some kind: a number, a percentage, a currency amount, a duration, or a headcount.

Your score is that percentage, so half your bullets carrying a number scores 50 and all of them scores 100.

To pass it, put the result inside the bullet rather than leaving it implied. "Cut onboarding time from 6 weeks to 9 days" rather than "Improved onboarding". Team sizes, budgets, volumes, frequencies, and percentages all count, so most bullets have a number available once you go looking for it.

Bullet point count (weight 18)

This check wants at least 3 bullets on every experience, project, and volunteer entry, because an entry with one line under it does not give a reader enough to judge the role.

Each entry carries an equal share of the 100, and an entry with 1 or 2 bullets earns partial credit rather than nothing. So with 4 roles, one role carrying a single bullet costs you about 17 points, not the whole check.

Experience gaps (weight 12)

This check is binary. No gaps scores 100, and any gap found scores 50, with a second gap costing nothing further.

A gap counts once there are 2 or more whole empty calendar months between the end of one role and the start of the next, so a role ending in March followed by one starting in June is a gap, while March to April is not.

Month only dates are read as the last day of that month, which is why "March 2022" to "April 2022" does not invent a gap that is not there.

Where a gap is real, the usual fixes are entering a role you left off your resume, adding volunteer or project entries that cover the period, or setting your current role correctly so the timeline runs all the way to today.

Weak action verbs (weight 8)

This check penalizes bullets that open with a verb describing presence rather than achievement, because those verbs tell a reader you were in the room without saying what changed.

The list is: handled, worked, assisted, helped, fixed, overcame, talked, wrote, spoke, oversaw, held, did, took care of, set up, kept track, kept up, made, checked, gave, showed, got, provided, responsible for, supported, participated, watched, tried, does, utilized, acted as, dealt with, contributed to, arranged, worked with.

Ten of those cost extra, because they say the least about what you actually did: responsible, helped, assisted, participated, involved, handled, dealt, tried, worked, did.

The penalty grows with the number of distinct weak verbs you use and with the share of bullets affected, so replacing the one or two you lean on most is the fastest way back.

First person language (weight 6)

Resumes are written without pronouns, so this check looks for i, my, me, mine, myself, i'm, i've, i'll, and i'd.

Pronouns in your professional summary cost more than pronouns anywhere else, because the summary is the section where they most often survive a rewrite.

All caps acronyms are handled, so ME sitting in a field that is not otherwise all caps is read as an acronym rather than as the pronoun.

Repetitive action verbs (weight 6)

Starting six bullets with "Managed" reads as one job done six times, which flattens work that was probably more varied than that.

The penalty rises with the number of verbs you repeat, rises again for any verb used 3 or more times, and rises with the share of bullets involved. Varying the opening verb is the only thing that moves it.

Buzzwords (weight 4)

This check is graded by density rather than by a flat count, so one buzzword in a long resume barely registers while six in a short one hurts.

The list includes: synergy, results-driven, team player, hardworking, go-getter, self-starter, thought leader, out-of-the-box thinker, highly skilled, seasoned, top performer, best of breed, value-added, cutting-edge, strong work ethic, team-oriented, results-oriented.

Every one of these is a claim with no evidence attached, and a reader discounts it accordingly. Replace the claim with the evidence behind it.

Brevity

Bullet point length (weight 10)

Every bullet should be between 40 and 250 characters.

Under 40 characters is usually a fragment with no result in it, and over 250 is a paragraph wearing a bullet.

The score falls with the share of bullets that are out of range and with how far out of range they are, so trimming your worst offenders moves it fastest. It passes only once every bullet is inside the range.

Filler words (weight 4)

Filler words take up line length without adding information, which costs you twice on a document that is fighting for space. The most expensive ones are: responsible for, duties included, hardworking, hard working, team player, go-getter, think outside of the box, synergy, i am seeking, variety, various, duties.

The penalty scales with total occurrences and with how many of your sections are affected. "Responsible for managing a team of 6" becomes "Managed a team of 6", which fixes this check and the weak verb check at once.

Professional summary length (weight 6)

This check wants your summary between 150 and 800 characters, which is roughly 2 to 5 sentences.

Too short is penalized harder than too long, because a 40 character summary tells a reader nothing at all, while an overlong one at least says something.

Summaries written as bullets (weight 4)

Entry summaries are meant to be prose, so this check fails when a summary field contains bullet characters.

The penalty is split evenly across your summaries, so with 4 summaries, one bulleted summary costs 25 points here. Move those bullets into the achievements list, where they are scored properly, and leave the summary as a paragraph.

Paragraph length (weight 2)

The lightest of the 12. Entry summaries should be between 100 and 725 characters, and it scores on the average across your summaries, so one long summary does not sink it.

If a check says it could not run

A check can occasionally report This check could not run and score 0. That result is about the check itself rather than about anything you wrote, so save and rescore and it comes back with a real number.

If a check has nothing to read

On a resume with no bullets in it, the checks that need bullets are skipped rather than failed. A resume with no experience entries at all is not penalized on bullet count, it takes a completion score hit instead, which is by far the heavier of the two.