What your job match score means, and what to do with it

People ask us two things about the match score on a job: what does it mean, and is a 70 good? The short answer is that it's a way to pick which twenty jobs get your Tuesday evening. It is not a prediction of whether you'll get hired.

The score compares what the job asks for with what your resume shows: the skills, the years of experience, the kind of work you've done. A recruiter with 300 applications in their inbox has never seen our number and doesn't care about it. So treat it as a sorting tool for you, not a grade.

A worked example

Say you're a backend engineer with four years of Python and AWS, and you open a role that wants Python, Kubernetes and Terraform. You'll see a high score, with Kubernetes and Terraform listed as gaps.

Now ask what's actually true:

• You've used Kubernetes at work, but your resume only says "deployed services on AWS". The gap is on the page, not in your head. Fix the resume.
• You've never touched it, but you've done something close, like Docker and ECS. Say that, in the job's own words.
• You honestly haven't done it. Then it's a stretch role. That's fine, but decide on purpose.

Don't add a skill you don't have to nudge the score up. It survives about one interview question.

How to fix a gap that isn't really a gap

Most "missing" skills are things you've done but described badly. The fix is to be specific about what you did and what changed. Here's the same experience written two ways (the numbers are made up, use your own):

Before: Responsible for deployments on AWS.

After: Moved 12 services from EC2 to ECS, cutting deploy time from 40 minutes to 8, and wrote the Terraform to recreate the setup in a new region.

The second one does three things the first doesn't. It names the tools, it says what you actually did, and it gives a result. A recruiter skimming for "Terraform" finds it, and so does any automated matching.

A few habits that help:

1. Mirror the job's wording where it's true. If the job says "CI/CD pipelines" and you wrote "build automation", use their term.
2. Put the strongest evidence first. If the role is mostly about data, lead with your data work even if your latest job was different.
3. Cut what doesn't help for this job. A one-page resume tailored to ten roles beats a long one sent to a hundred.

Our rough rule of thumb

This is a habit, not a formula:

• Top of your list: read the reasons, tailor your resume for the role, and apply today.
• The middle: open the ones at companies you actually want. If the gap is a single skill you can pick up in a month, it's a good stretch.
• The bottom: skip, unless you have a specific reason to care about the company.

Three mistakes we see a lot

• Chasing 100. A perfect score on a role you don't want is worse than a 70 on one you do. Nobody's resume matches everything, and the jobs that do are often the ones with the thinnest requirements.
• Ignoring seniority. A role asking for six years when you have three is a bigger gap than a missing tool. Tools can be learned in weeks, years can't.
• Applying to everything. Twenty tailored applications will usually get you further than a hundred identical ones.

Don't wait

Good matches get a lot of applicants fast. If a strong one shows up, apply while it's new. A decent application sent today usually beats a perfect one sent next week.

Ready to see your own scores? Upload your resume and look at the open roles.