A resume builder that shows how it scores your resume
Offermic has a resume builder in the web app. This page says what it does and publishes every rule behind its resume score: what fails, how much it weighs and where the rule comes from.
We make Offermic, and this page describes our own product. Other companies are named only as the sources of rules.
Updated
What the builder does
Create a resume
Start from a blank page in the web app. A resume has your contact details, a summary and the sections you add: experience, education, skills, projects and certifications, plus sections you name yourself. Each bullet is its own row, and you can hide a section or an entry without deleting it.
Edit with a live PDF preview
The preview is the PDF itself, drawn on the page as you type, so what you see is the file you download. There are 2 templates, both a single column, on Letter and A4 paper, with 3 spacing settings, a text size control and a button that fits the resume to one page when it can.
Download PDF or Word on every plan
Downloads are unlimited and carry no watermark or logo, on the free plan and on Premium. The free plan keeps 1 built resume and Premium keeps 50.
Import your own PDF or DOCX
Upload a PDF or DOCX of up to 2 MB, or paste the text. An AI model reads it into the editor's fields. It is instructed to copy your words and not to add, reword or translate anything, but check the result against your original. The file is sent to our AI provider to be read and is not stored. An import counts as one resume analysis: 2 a day on the free plan, 10 on Premium.
See what a parser reads
When you upload a PDF, the app first reads its text layer in your browser and shows a report on the file: the text in reading order and the file checks listed below. For a resume you build, the parser view reads the text back from the PDF you are about to download and checks that every printed field came back, in order.
Start a voice interview from the resume
A built resume can start a voice mock interview. The interviewer is briefed on your roles, your skills and the leading bullets of your recent jobs, and asks about them.
What it does not do
The builder does not write your resume. There is no AI rewriting in it, and the coaching under each bullet comes from the same fixed rules as the score. It exports PDF and Word (DOCX), has 2 templates and no gallery, does not compare your resume with a job posting, and does not make cover letters.
How the resume score works
The resume score is a number from 0 to 100 that the builder works out from the rules on this page, as you type. It is our own measure. It is not a score from an applicant tracking system, and no employer sees it. Only what prints is checked: hidden sections, entries and bullets are ignored.
The three parts
Parsing
40%
Whether software can read the resume back: the contact details, each entry, its dates and the headings.
Content
40%
How the bullets and the summary are written.
Completeness
20%
Whether the parts a reader looks for are there.
How the number is worked out
- Each part starts at 100.
- A failed rule takes points from its part: its whole weight or a share of it. The Takes column of each rule says which. The weights in a part add up to more than 100, so several failures can take a part to 0. A part cannot go below 0.
- “Full weight” means the rule takes all of its weight once it fails, however many places fail. Example: “Emoji and pictographs” weighs 10 and takes 10, whether one bullet holds an emoji or every bullet does.
- “Share of …” means the rule takes its weight multiplied by the fraction that fails of the entries, bullets or headings named there, and never less than 25% of its weight. Example: “Long bullets” weighs 15. With 2 of 10 bullets too long it takes 3.75 points, which is the minimum; with 5 of 10 it takes 7.5.
- One rule, “Bullets with a number”, has a formula of its own, printed in its row: the nearer the resume is to the target of 30%, the less it takes. Example: it weighs 20. With 2 of 10 experience bullets holding a number it takes 20 × (1 − 20% ÷ 30%) = 6.67 points.
- Each part is rounded to a whole number. The total is parsing × 40% + content × 40% + completeness × 20%, rounded again. Example: a resume whose only failed rule is “Phone” (weight 15) has parsing at 85 and a total of 94.
- A blocker caps the total at 49, however well the rest scores. The blockers are “Name”, “Email” and “Any content”.
- One warning caps the total as well. While “Bullets in total” fails, the total cannot go above 84, one point under the “Ready” band. The rules take points for what is written wrongly, so without this cap a resume with almost nothing written in it would read as ready.
- The number of printed words caps the total for the same reason. A resume that prints fewer than 150 words cannot go above 84, and one that prints fewer than 75 cannot go above 59, one point under the “Almost there” band: with so little on the page there is not enough to judge.
- Tips weigh 0. They are advice, and they never change the score.
- A rule that cannot run takes nothing. Rules marked “English only” rely on English word lists and are skipped for a resume in another language. Two rules wait until the PDF has been drawn: “PDF read-back” and “Page count”.
You set a level for each resume: entry, mid or senior. The level changes three rules and nothing else: how many bullets a job should have, how many pages the resume should fit on, and whether a project can stand in for experience.
The bands
| Band | Score |
|---|---|
| Ready | 85–100 |
| Almost there | 60–84 |
| Needs work | 0–59 |
Where the rules come from
Each rule links to its source when it has one. A source is one of two kinds: parsing documentation from a company whose software reads resumes (Greenhouse help centre and Textkernel parser documentation), or a resume checker that applies the same kind of rule (Resume Worded, Rezi and Novoresume). The Source column says which. “Our own rule” means there is no outside source.
The weights are our own choices. So is every threshold that its source does not state as a number. A link shows where the idea for a rule comes from; it does not mean the source endorses our numbers.
Parsing rules: 40% of the score
| Rule | Fails when | Weight | Takes | Severity | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Name | The name is empty. | 40 | Full weight | Blocker | Textkernel parser documentationparsing documentation |
| The email is empty. | 40 | Full weight | Blocker | Textkernel parser documentationparsing documentation | |
| Email format | The email is filled in but does not have the form name@domain.tld. | 25 | Full weight | Warning | Our own rule |
| Phone | The phone number is empty or has fewer than 7 digits. | 15 | Full weight | Warning | Textkernel parser documentationparsing documentation |
| Complete entries | An experience entry has no job title or no employer, or an education entry has no degree or no school. | 20 | Share of the experience and education entries | Warning | Textkernel parser documentationparsing documentation |
| Dates on jobs | An experience entry has no start date, or has no end date and is not marked as current. Education and certification entries are not judged: a school without a year and a licence without a date are ordinary. | 30 | Share of the experience entries | Warning | Textkernel parser documentationparsing documentation |
| Months in dates | An experience entry has a start or end date with a year but no month. | 15 | Share of the experience entries | Warning | Reziresume checker |
| Date order | An entry ends before it starts. | 20 | Share of the experience, education, project and custom entries | Warning | Our own rule |
| Standard section headingsEnglish only | A section heading is not on our list of standard headings below, and is not a heading of 2 to 4 words that ends in one of the heading endings listed below, such as “Clinical Experience” or “Selected Publications”. A colon at the end is ignored. | 15 | Share of the section headings | Warning | Textkernel parser documentationparsing documentation |
| Repeated section headings | Two sections print the same heading. Capital letters make no difference. | 10 | Full weight | Warning | Textkernel parser documentationparsing documentation |
| Emoji and pictographs | A printed field holds an emoji or another pictograph. The PDF leaves them out. | 10 | Full weight | Warning | Our own rule |
| Link format | A link is not a web address with a dot in its host name. A link typed without https:// is read as if it had it. | 10 | Full weight | Warning | Our own rule |
| PDF read-back | The text read back from the finished PDF is missing a printed field, or the section headings and entry titles come back in a different order. The rule runs once the PDF has been drawn. | 40 | Full weight | Warning | Our own rule |
Content rules: 40% of the score
| Rule | Fails when | Weight | Takes | Severity | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bullets per job | The first experience entry has fewer or more bullets than the range for the resume's level: 2 to 6 for entry level, 3 to 6 for mid level, 3 to 7 for senior. A later entry has no bullets or more than that maximum. | 20 | Share of the experience entries | Warning | Resume Wordedresume checker |
| Long bullets | A bullet in experience, projects, education or a custom section is longer than 220 characters. | 15 | Share of the bullets in experience, projects, education and custom sections | Warning | Resume Wordedresume checker |
| Short bullets | An experience or project bullet has fewer than 4 words. Education and custom lines are not judged: “GPA 3.8” is complete as it is. | 8 | Share of the experience and project bullets | Warning | Reziresume checker |
| Weak openingsEnglish only | An experience or project bullet starts with one of the weak openings listed below. | 20 | Share of the experience and project bullets | Warning | Resume Wordedresume checker |
| Bullets with a number | Experience has at least 3 bullets and fewer than 30% of them contain a number. A number is a digit, a percent sign or a currency sign; a year on its own (1950 to 2100) does not count. | 20 | Weight × (1 − the share of experience bullets with a number ÷ 30%), never less than 25% of the weight | Warning | Reziresume checker |
| Personal pronounsEnglish only | A bullet contains I, me, my, we, our or us as a word. “I” counts only when its verb follows, as in “I led” or “I’ve led”, and after a capitalised word only when that word opens the sentence and is on the list of sentence openers below (“Then I trained”). Codes, numerals, names and parts of an address are not counted: I-9, I/O, Phase I, Analyst I, Stages I and II, US, Contact Us, about.me. | 10 | Share of the bullets in experience, projects, education and custom sections | Warning | Resume Wordedresume checker |
| Filler wordsEnglish only | A bullet or the summary contains one of the filler words listed below. Not counted: a word joined to its neighbour by a hyphen (“just-in-time”), and a word written with a capital inside a sentence or in capitals throughout, which is read as a name (“Just Culture”). | 8 | Share of the bullets in experience, projects, education and custom sections, plus the summary when there is one | Warning | Resume Wordedresume checker |
| BuzzwordsEnglish only | A bullet or the summary contains one of the buzzwords listed below. Not counted: a phrase joined to its neighbour by a hyphen, and one written with a capital inside a sentence or in capitals throughout, which is read as a name (“Synergy ERP”). | 8 | Share of the bullets in experience, projects, education and custom sections, plus the summary when there is one | Warning | Resume Wordedresume checker |
| Repeated first words | The same first word opens 3 or more bullets across experience and projects. Every bullet that opens with such a word counts towards the share. | 10 | Share of the experience and project bullets | Warning | Resume Wordedresume checker |
| Mixed end punctuation | Experience and projects hold at least 4 bullets, some end with a full stop and some do not, and the smaller group is at least 20% of them. | 5 | Full weight | Warning | Resume Wordedresume checker |
| Summary length | The summary is longer than 600 characters. | 8 | Full weight | Warning | Our own rule |
Completeness rules: 20% of the score
| Rule | Fails when | Weight | Takes | Severity | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Any content | No section of the resume has anything to print. | 60 | Full weight | Blocker | Our own rule |
| Experience | There is no experience entry. On an entry-level resume a project entry counts as well. | 40 | Full weight | Warning | Resume Wordedresume checker |
| Bullets in total | Experience and projects together print fewer than 3 bullets. While this rule fails, the total score cannot go above 84, whatever the three parts add up to. | 40 | Full weight | Warning | Our own rule |
| Education | There is no education entry. | 20 | Full weight | Warning | Resume Wordedresume checker |
| Skills | There is no skill. | 20 | Full weight | Warning | Resume Wordedresume checker |
| Number of skills | There are more than 30 skills. | 8 | Full weight | Warning | Novoresumeresume checker |
| Location | The location in the contact details is empty. | 10 | Full weight | Warning | Resume Wordedresume checker |
| A link | The contact details have no link. | 0 | Nothing | Tip | Our own rule |
| Summary | There is no summary. | 0 | Nothing | Tip | Resume Wordedresume checker |
| Headline | There is no headline under the name. | 0 | Nothing | Tip | Our own rule |
| Location on jobs | An experience entry has no location. | 0 | Nothing | Tip | Our own rule |
| Word count | The resume prints fewer than 150 or more than 1,000 words. | 0 | Nothing | Tip | Reziresume checker |
| Page count | The PDF is longer than the target for the resume's level: 1 page for entry level, 1 page for mid level, 2 pages for senior. The rule runs once the PDF has been drawn. | 0 | Nothing | Tip | Reziresume checker |
File checks for a PDF you upload
These checks run on your own PDF before it is imported. They produce a separate report on the file and are not part of the resume score: the file starts at 100, each failed check takes its weight, and the result cannot go below 0. A blocker takes no points; it caps the file's result at 30.
| Check | Fails when | Weight | Severity | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Text layer | The file holds fewer than 100 characters of text, or fewer than 40 per page on average while its pages hold images. That is what a scan or a photo of a resume looks like to software. | – | Blocker | Our own rule |
| Readable characters | At least 5% of the characters come out unreadable: replacement, private-use or control characters. | 30 | Warning | Our own rule |
| Letter spacing | The text has at least 30 words and 40% or more of them are a single letter, which is how spaced-out lettering reads. It also fails when no line is an experience or education heading but one comes back letter by letter (“E X P E R I E N C E”); the file then fails this check and not the check for section headings. | 20 | Warning | Greenhouse help centreparsing documentation |
| Columns | On a page, lines start at two left edges at least 20% of the page width apart, each with 6 or more lines, side by side. Dates set against the right margin are not a column, and neither is text that follows a label ending in a colon on its line (“Languages: SQL”). | 30 | Warning | Greenhouse help centreparsing documentation |
| Email found | No email address is found in the text. | 20 | Warning | Textkernel parser documentationparsing documentation |
| Phone found | No phone number of 7 to 15 digits is found in the text. | 10 | Warning | Textkernel parser documentationparsing documentation |
| Section headings found | No line of the text is a heading for experience or education: one on our lists below, a heading of 2 to 4 words that ends in “experience” or “education”, or one of the headings in another language listed below. A heading that comes back letter by letter fails the letter spacing check instead, and both checks when the text is letter-spaced throughout. | 20 | Warning | Textkernel parser documentationparsing documentation |
| Date ranges found | No date range is found in the text, such as “Mar 2021 - Present” or “2019 to 2022”. | 15 | Warning | Textkernel parser documentationparsing documentation |
| File size | The file is larger than 2.5 MB, the size above which Greenhouse says it cannot parse a resume. | 10 | Warning | Greenhouse help centreparsing documentation |
The word lists
These are the complete lists, as the app uses them. Matching looks for whole words, so “various” does not match inside another word. Each rule's row says what it leaves out.
Standard section headings
Used by “Standard section headings” and by the file check for headings, which looks for the experience and education lists. The lists are our own choice of common headings, not a list taken from a parser.
- Experience
- experience, work experience, professional experience, relevant experience, employment, employment history, work history, career history, military service, internships, clinical rotations, student teaching
- Education
- education, education and training, education & training, academic background
- Skills
- skills, technical skills, core skills, key skills, skills and tools, skills & tools, core competencies, areas of expertise
- Projects
- projects, personal projects, selected projects, academic projects
- Certifications
- certifications, certification, certificates, licenses, license, licensure, licenses and certifications, licenses & certifications, certifications and licenses, certifications & licenses
- Other sections
- additional, additional information, awards, honors, honors and awards, honors & awards, awards and honors, awards & honors, honours and awards, honours & awards, achievements, publications, presentations, grants, patents, volunteer, volunteer experience, volunteering, volunteer work, languages, language, interests, activities, extracurricular activities, professional development, professional affiliations, memberships, leadership, leadership experience, research, research experience, coursework, relevant coursework, training, references, summary, professional summary, objective, profile
- Weak openings
- responsible for, worked on, worked with, helped, helped with, duties included, tasked with, participated in, involved in, in charge of, was, wereUsed by: Weak openings
- Filler words
- very, really, just, successfully, various, several, in order to, etc, basically, activelyUsed by: Filler words
- Buzzwords
- team player, hard-working, hardworking, synergy, results-driven, results-oriented, detail-oriented, go-getter, self-starter, think outside the box, passionate, proactiveUsed by: Buzzwords
- Words a Roman numeral follows
- phase, level, division, title, tier, type, class, part, grade, stage, categoryUsed by: Personal pronouns: an “I” after one of these, in the singular or the plural, is a numeral, not a pronoun
- Sentence openers
- after, also, although, and, as, because, before, but, here, how, if, later, now, once, since, so, that, then, there, though, today, until, what, when, where, which, while, who, why, yetUsed by: Personal pronouns: an “I” after a capitalised word is a pronoun only when that word is one of these and opens the sentence
- Heading endings
- experience, education, skills, projects, certifications, publicationsUsed by: Standard section headings: a heading of 2 to 4 words that ends in one of these is standard
- Turkish section headings
- deneyim, iş deneyimi, eğitim, eğitim bilgileri, beceriler, projeler, sertifikalar, ek bilgilerUsed by: Section headings found, the file check, which reads the experience and education headings among them. The heading rule of the score is English only
- Spanish section headings
- experiencia, experiencia laboral, experiencia profesional, historial laboral, educación, educacion, formación, formacion, formación académica, formacion academica, estudios, habilidades, competencias, aptitudes, conocimientos, proyectos, certificaciones, certificados, información adicional, informacion adicional, idiomas, referenciasUsed by: Section headings found, the file check, which reads the experience and education headings among them. The heading rule of the score is English only
What applicant tracking systems say about scores
None of the vendor pages we read for the rules above publishes a resume score that a candidate can look up, or a formula for one. The number on this page is our own, which is why it is called a resume score and nothing else.
Some of these systems do rate applicants, for the recruiter. Greenhouse's Talent Matching compares each resume with criteria the hiring team sets. Its FAQ says the feature will “sort the candidate pool into match categories” and speaks of a “match score”. The rating goes to the hiring team: “The results are presented to recruiters and hiring managers in their dashboard for further review, so humans decide how to advance, reject, or follow up with each candidate.” (Greenhouse: Talent Matching FAQ)
A number from a resume checker is a different thing: the checker's own measure, as ours is. Two companies that sell checkers say so:
- Enhancv, on the scores that online tools show: “no tool online that provides a score gives an actual score” (Enhancv resume checker)
- Jobscan, on the number its own checker shows: “The match rate in our scanner is a visualization tool to help you measure the strength of your resume before you apply.” (Jobscan resume scanner)
Vendors have also said who decides about a candidate, the software or a person. Their statements differ, so each is quoted on its own:
- Greenhouse, on its Talent Matching feature: “Talent Matching does not auto-reject or auto-advance any candidate” (Greenhouse: Talent Matching FAQ)
- Lever, on artificial intelligence in hiring software, in a post from 2021: “artificial intelligence isn’t an ATS feature that can or should make important decisions regarding who talent teams should or shouldn’t move forward with”. The same post names this among the ways AI can help: “auto-archiving unqualified individuals”. It also says that rules a recruiter sets remove applicants: “Knockout questions defined by recruiters and hiring managers auto-eliminate prospects who don’t meet the bare-minimum criteria for roles”. (Lever: 5 Applicant Tracking System Myths, Debunked)
- Ashby, on its AI-Assisted Application Review feature: “The AI never ‘ranks’ or gives numerical ratings to applicants, a human must always be involved in decision-making.” (Ashby: An ATS with AI to Power Your Recruiting) Its knowledge base article on the same feature describes a column that reviewers can add: “To see a numeric percentage of criteria met, search for AI Job Criteria Met Percentage — sort by this column to rank candidates from best fit (highest percentage) to least fit (lowest).” (Ashby: AI-Assisted Application Review)
- Workday, on its AI recruiting tools: “Workday AI does not make hiring decisions.” (Workday: Demystifying AI in Hiring: Clarifying How Workday's AI Recruiting Tools Work)
These are the vendors' own descriptions of their products, as we read them on October 9, 2026. Each is about one feature or about AI, not about everything the system does. A rule that a recruiter sets, such as the knockout questions quoted above, can still remove an applicant automatically.
Five systems have a page of their own here, each built from the vendor's public documentation: Workday, Greenhouse, Lever, iCIMS and Ashby. A separate post gives the oldest sources we found for the claim that software rejects 75% of resumes.
Employers never see this number. It is not printed on the PDF, and it exists only inside the builder.
What this score cannot tell you
A high resume score means the resume follows the rules on this page, and nothing more. It does not mean the resume suits a particular job, that what it says is true or impressive, or that it will lead to an interview. The rules count characters, words and dates; they cannot judge your experience. The parser view shows what our reader gets out of the PDF, and an employer's system uses its own parser, which may read the same file differently. Another checker has its own rules, so its number for the same resume can differ. The word-list rules cover English only.
Found a rule that misfires? Email support@offermic.com with the line it flagged.