ResumeAdapter
The manual pass
Updated 2026-08-09

Twenty-four questions,
in the order they have to be asked.

Why the order

Most resume checklists are grouped by topic, which quietly lets you judge content that was never going to be read. This one is grouped by pass: the posting before the resume, the parse before the content, required before preferred, and a rerun at the end. Answer each item yes or no.

Print with Ctrl or Cmd + PManual pass first
Resume review checklist
Five groups, 24 questions
01

Before you open the resume

Do this first or your first impression of the candidate decides what counts as evidence.

  • I have the specific job description in front of me, not a similar one.
  • I have separated the posting's required criteria from its preferred qualifications.
  • I have written the required criteria down as a list I can tick through.
  • I have noted the posting's own phrasing for each requirement, not my paraphrase of it.
02

Parse integrity

Content that does not extract cannot be reviewed, so this runs before any judgment about wording.

  • Opened or exported the file as plain text to see what actually extracts.
  • Name and contact details survive, and are in the body rather than a header or footer.
  • Every section heading survives and is a standard name a reader would expect.
  • Every employer, job title, and date range survives, still attached to the right role.
  • No multi-column layout, table, text box, or graphic skill bar is carrying information.
  • Reading order is correct: nothing interleaves two columns into nonsense.
03

Required criteria

The heaviest pass. Take one criterion at a time and resist reading ahead.

  • Every required criterion has been checked individually against the resume.
  • Each one is marked met and findable, met but worded differently, or genuinely absent.
  • Nothing marked absent is actually present under an internal project name or former employer's jargon.
  • Anything marked worded differently has the posting's phrase noted next to it as the fix.
  • No requirement has been marked met on the strength of an adjacent skill rather than the thing itself.
04

Preferred qualifications and evidence

Preferences are where people under-report. Evidence is where they over-assert.

  • Preferred qualifications that are genuinely met are stated somewhere a reader will see them.
  • Nothing is claimed in the skills section that the experience section does not support.
  • Most bullets carry a scope, an outcome, or a number rather than naming a responsibility.
  • Where no figure exists, scope stands in: team size, system size, client count, budget range.
  • Every number on the page is one the candidate could defend for two minutes if asked.
05

The human read, and the recheck

Software cannot score the first of these, and nobody bothers with the last one.

  • In fifteen seconds a reader can state the function, the level, and the fit to this posting.
  • The top third of page one does that work, rather than a summary that would suit any role.
  • The document argues for the role being applied to, not the last role held.
  • Edits have been made and the whole checklist has been run again on the same posting.

Resume review checklist · ResumeAdapter · resumeadapter.com/resume-review/checklist · Free to print and adapt with attribution

The quick answer

What should a resume review checklist cover?

Five groups, worked in order. First, before opening the resume: have the specific job description, separate required criteria from preferred qualifications, and write the requirements down in the posting's own phrasing. Second, parse integrity: export the file as plain text and confirm the name, contact details, section headings, employers, titles, and dates all survive with the reading order intact. Third, required criteria one at a time, each marked met and findable, met but worded differently, or genuinely absent. Fourth, preferred qualifications that are met but unstated, and whether bullets carry a scope, an outcome, or a number rather than naming a responsibility. Fifth, the fifteen-second human read, then edits, then the whole checklist again on the same posting. That last group is the one people skip, and it is the only one that proves the edits worked. .

Primary source

The two-part structure here is not our invention. The US Department of Labor's Resume Essentials participant guide, dated February 2026 and used in Veterans' Employment and Training Service transition workshops, runs a Two-Part Resume Review activity: participants work through a manual checklist first, then run a second pass with an AI chatbot, and the guide supplies the prompt.

US Department of Labor, VETS, Resume Essentials Participant Guide (February 2026) (accessed 2026-08-09)

The second pass

Automate the counting. Keep the judgment.

The mechanical items on this checklist are the ones worth automating, and they are most of it. Two items cannot be automated well, and it is worth knowing which.

Ask it what is missing. Never ask it to fill the gap.

Checking what extracted, matching nineteen required criteria against a document, and spotting bullets that name a duty instead of a result are all comparisons software does more consistently than a person doing it for the ninth time in an afternoon.

Whether a requirement you did not state is one you actually meet is a judgment about your own history. And the fifteen-second read is a question about a human reader, so it needs one.

The boundary to hold, whichever tool you use: it can tell you what the posting asks for that your resume never says. It must not write the experience for you. Anything a tool proposes adding has to trace back to something you genuinely did, and if you cannot say where it came from, it does not go on the page. That is the same line the Department of Labor guide draws in its own responsible-AI section.

FAQ

Resume review checklist FAQ

Questions from people working the list by hand for the first time. Answers are byte-identical to the FAQPage JSON-LD on this page.

What should be on a resume review checklist?

Items grouped by the order a review runs in, not by topic. Start with the posting: have the specific job description, separate required criteria from preferred qualifications, and write the requirements down before opening the resume. Then check that the file parses, because content that does not extract cannot be reviewed. Then work the required criteria one at a time, marking each as met and findable, met but worded differently, or genuinely absent. Then check preferred qualifications and whether bullets carry evidence rather than asserting responsibilities. Finish with the human read and a rerun after edits. A checklist organised by topic instead of order lets you judge content that was never going to be read.

Should I review my resume manually or use a tool?

Both, in that order, which is what the US Department of Labor's Resume Essentials participant guide teaches in its own two-part activity: work the manual checklist first, then run a second pass with an AI chatbot. The ordering matters because the two passes are good at different things. The manual pass needs judgment about your own history, particularly deciding whether a requirement you did not state is one you actually meet. The automated pass is better at the mechanical layer and better at repetition: what parsed, what the posting asks for that never appears, and which bullets assert rather than evidence, for the ninth posting today without getting bored.

How long does a manual resume review take?

About twenty to forty minutes per posting once the method is familiar, and most of it goes to the required-criteria pass. That is the part where you read each requirement, hunt for its evidence, and decide honestly which of the three outcomes applies. The parse check takes a couple of minutes. The human read takes fifteen seconds by definition, though acting on it can take longer. The recheck after editing is faster than the first run because you already have the criteria list written down, which is the main reason writing it down is item one.

What is the most commonly missed item on a resume review?

The recheck. People run a review, collect a list of fixes, make the edits, and never verify that the edits closed the thing they were supposed to close. It is the only step that tells you whether the work landed, and skipping it is how resumes end up heavily edited and no better matched. The second most missed item is the parse check, usually because the resume looks fine on screen: a two-column layout that reads beautifully to a human can interleave into nonsense when extracted, and every content judgment made afterwards is then a judgment about text nobody will see.

Can I use this checklist for someone else's resume?

Yes, and it is built to work that way: every item is a yes or no question checkable against the document and the posting, which is what makes it usable across a client load or a cohort without two reviewers reaching different conclusions. If you want a graded reading rather than pass or fail, the scoring rubric is the same five dimensions with weights and band descriptions. One practical note when reviewing for other people: their resume is their personal data, so upload it to any tool only with their authorization and check what that tool retains first.

Continue
Graded, or worked
Rubric

The scored version of this checklist

Same five groups as weighted dimensions with band descriptions, for when yes or no is not enough.

Read
Group 03, worked

Required criteria on a real posting

The hardest group on this list, worked criterion by criterion with all three outcomes shown.

Read
Pillar

Why the passes run in this order

The reasoning behind the sequence, and what changes when you review for someone else.

Read
Part two

You have done the manual pass.
Now run the mechanical one.

Paste the same posting you worked the checklist against and get the counting done for you: what extracted, which required criteria the resume never states back, and which bullets assert rather than evidence. Free to run, and you sign in first.

Or score it on the rubric →