A job description is a screening rubric in disguise. This decodes it — what the role is really testing for under the buzzwords — then maps your actual experience onto each requirement and drafts a resume bullet and cover-letter line for every one. Claude does the matching; you keep it honest.
Who this is for
Anyone applying for a specific role who wants their materials to mirror what the hiring team is actually scanning for — without inventing experience they don't have.
What you'll need
- The job description (copy the full text).
- Your resume / experience in a doc.
- Claude and a Google Doc for the tailored materials.
Decode the posting · 10 min
Paste the JD into Claude and ask what it's really screening for:
Here's a job description. Reverse-engineer it for me.
1. List the 5–7 requirements that actually matter (ignore boilerplate), ranked by how heavily they're probably weighted.
2. For each, translate the corporate phrasing into what they're really testing for ("cross-functional collaboration" → "can you ship when you don't own the resources?").
3. Flag the 2–3 things that are likely dealbreakers if missing.
4. Guess the team's underlying pain — what problem is this hire meant to solve?
Job description:
[paste]Map your evidence honestly · 15 min
Paste your resume and have Claude build the matrix:
Here's my real experience. For each requirement you identified, map my strongest matching evidence. - If I clearly have it: draft one tight resume bullet (outcome + number) and one cover-letter sentence. - If I have it partially or by analogy: say so, and draft an honest framing — no inflation. - If I genuinely lack it: flag the gap and suggest how I'd address it (adjacent experience, how I'd ramp), without pretending. Do not invent anything. If you're unsure whether I have something, ask. My experience: [paste]
Assemble and gut-check · 15 min
Pull the strong bullets into your resume order and the sentences into a short cover letter. Then read every line and ask: could I defend this in an interview? Cut anything you couldn't. The gaps Claude flagged are your interview-prep list, not things to hide.
Letting it inflate. AI will happily stretch "helped with" into "led." Anything you can't defend out loud in an interview comes out.
Keyword-stuffing. Mirroring the JD's language helps; parroting it verbatim reads as gaming the filter. Use their words for real matches only.
Ignoring the gaps. The flagged gaps are gold — they're almost certainly what the interview will probe. Prep them instead of pretending they're not there.
Do this next
- Turn the gaps into interview prep — draft your honest story for each before you apply.
- Save the decoded rubric. When you get the interview, it tells you what they'll dig into.
- Reuse the matrix for similar roles — the evidence mapping transfers; only the weighting changes.