You spend hours polishing your resume, send it to dozens of companies, and hear nothing back. Not even a rejection email.
If that sounds familiar, the problem might not be your experience. It might be a piece of software.
Most companies today use an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) to filter resumes before a human ever sees them. If your resume isn’t formatted and worded the way the ATS expects, it quietly gets pushed to the bottom of the pile. A strong candidate can get rejected simply because the system couldn’t read their resume properly.
The good news is that Claude is excellent at fixing exactly this problem. In this post, I’m sharing three Claude prompts I put together that cover the entire resume process: building one from scratch, tailoring it to a specific job, and auditing an existing resume to find out why it’s not working.
What Makes a Resume ATS Friendly?
Before we get to the prompts, it helps to understand what an ATS actually looks for.
An ATS scans your resume, pulls the text into a database, and compares it against the job description. It checks for keywords, job titles, skills, and experience. Then it ranks candidates based on how well they match.
The problems start when your resume uses fancy design elements. Tables, multiple columns, icons, text boxes, and graphics often confuse the parser. Your beautifully designed resume might come out the other side as jumbled text, or with entire sections missing.
An ATS friendly resume keeps things simple. It uses a single column, standard section headings like “Experience” and “Education,” clear dates, and the same keywords that appear in the job posting. It’s not the prettiest document, but it’s the one that gets read.
Prompt One: Build an ATS Friendly Resume From Scratch
This first prompt is for anyone who doesn’t have a resume yet, or whose current one is so outdated that starting over makes more sense.
What I like about this prompt is that Claude doesn’t jump in and start writing. Instead, it interviews you first, one section at a time. It also asks follow-up questions when your answers are vague, which is where the real value comes from. Most people undersell their achievements, and Claude will push you to dig out the numbers that make recruiters pay attention.
Act as an expert resume writer and ATS (Applicant Tracking System) specialist with 15 years of recruiting experience. I want you to build a complete ATS friendly resume for me. Do not write anything yet. First, interview me by asking questions one section at a time, in this order: my target role, industry, and experience level; my contact details and location (city and country only); my work experience (for each role, the title, company, dates, responsibilities, and any numbers or results I can remember); my education and certifications; my technical and soft skills; and finally any projects, awards, or volunteer work, which is optional.
Ask follow-up questions whenever my answers are vague, especially to uncover measurable achievements such as percentages, revenue, time saved, team size, or number of clients.
After the interview, write the resume using these ATS rules. Use a single column layout with no tables, text boxes, icons, graphics, or headers and footers. Use standard section headings: Summary, Experience, Skills, Education, and Certifications. List everything in reverse chronological order and format dates as “MMM YYYY.” Start each bullet with a strong action verb and follow the format of Action plus Task plus Measurable Result. Write three to five bullets per role, each under two lines. Include relevant industry keywords naturally, without keyword stuffing. Write a professional summary of three to four lines tailored to my target role. Keep it to one page if I have under eight years of experience, otherwise two pages maximum.
Deliver the final resume in plain text so I can paste it into Word or Google Docs.
How to get the best results: Be as honest and detailed as you can during the interview. If you don’t remember an exact number, give Claude a rough estimate and tell it so. “Around 20 clients a month” is far more useful than “handled clients.”
Prompt Two: Tailor Your Resume to a Specific Job Description
This is the prompt I’d recommend using the most. Sending the same generic resume to every job is one of the biggest reasons people don’t get callbacks. Every job description uses slightly different language, and the ATS rewards resumes that mirror that language.
This prompt makes Claude pull the important keywords from the job posting, show you which ones you’re missing, and then rewrite your resume to match. It even gives you an estimated before and after match score, so you can see the difference.
There’s also an important safety line built in: Claude is told never to invent experience. If something is missing, it asks you instead of making things up.
You are an ATS optimization expert and senior technical recruiter. I will give you my current resume and a job description. Your task is to tailor my resume so it scores as high as possible in an ATS scan for this specific job, while staying 100% truthful.
Step 1, Keyword Analysis: Extract the top 15 to 20 keywords and phrases from the job description, including hard skills, tools, certifications, job titles, and repeated phrases. Show them in a table with the columns Keyword, Priority (High, Medium, or Low), and Found in My Resume (Yes, No, or Partial).
Step 2, Gap Report: List the important keywords or requirements missing from my resume. For each one, tell me whether I can honestly add it based on my experience, or whether it is a genuine gap I should address in a cover letter or interview.
Step 3, Rewritten Resume: Rewrite my resume to mirror the exact terminology used in the job description (for example, if they say “stakeholder management,” don’t use “client relations”). Rewrite my summary to directly match the role. Reorder bullets so the most relevant achievements appear first. Update the Skills section to prioritize matching keywords. Keep ATS safe formatting with a single column, standard headings, and no tables or graphics.
Step 4, Match Score: Give an estimated before and after ATS match percentage with a short explanation.
Important: Never invent experience, skills, or numbers I haven’t provided. If something is missing, ask me instead.
Here is my resume: [PASTE YOUR RESUME]
Here is the job description: [PASTE THE JOB DESCRIPTION]
How to get the best results: Paste the full job description, including the “nice to have” section and the company overview. Those parts often contain keywords that people skip. Also, pay close attention to the Gap Report. It’s basically a cheat sheet for what to prepare before the interview.
Prompt Three: Full ATS Audit and Bullet Point Upgrade
If you’ve been applying for weeks with no responses, this is the prompt to start with. It turns Claude into a tough combination of ATS scanner and experienced hiring manager, and it tells you exactly what’s going wrong.
It checks whether your formatting will break ATS parsing, runs a quick “six second test” to see what a recruiter notices first, rewrites your weakest bullet points, points out red flags, and gives you a ranked list of fixes. At the end, you get a fully corrected version of your resume.
Act as a strict ATS scanner combined with a hiring manager who reviews 200 resumes a day. Audit my resume below and give me brutally honest feedback in this structure.
First, an ATS Compatibility Check: Flag anything that could break ATS parsing, such as tables, columns, images, icons, unusual fonts, headers and footers, non-standard section names, missing dates, or file format issues. Rate compatibility out of 10.
Second, the Six Second Test: Tell me what a recruiter would notice in the first six seconds of skimming. What stands out, and what gets lost?
Third, a Bullet Point Makeover: Identify my eight weakest bullet points, meaning ones that are vague, duty-based, or missing results. For each, show the original bullet, explain why it’s weak, and give a rewritten version using the formula Action Verb plus What I Did plus Measurable Impact. If I haven’t given enough information to add a number, use a placeholder like [X%] and tell me what to estimate.
Fourth, Red Flags: Point out anything that could hurt me, such as employment gaps, job hopping, outdated skills, irrelevant information, clichés like “hardworking team player,” or personal details that shouldn’t be there.
Fifth, a Priority Fix List: Give me the top five changes ranked by impact, so I know exactly what to fix first.
Sixth, the Final Version: Provide the fully corrected resume in clean, ATS friendly plain text.
My target role is: [JOB TITLE]
My resume: [PASTE YOUR RESUME]
How to get the best results: Don’t skip the placeholders. When Claude writes something like “Reduced processing time by [X%],” take a minute to estimate a realistic number. Bullets with real numbers are consistently the ones that catch a recruiter’s eye.
How to Use These Prompts Together
Each prompt works on its own, but they’re most powerful as a system.
If you have no resume at all, start with Prompt One to build a solid foundation. If you already have a resume, run it through Prompt Three first to fix formatting problems and weak bullet points. Once your base resume is strong, use Prompt Two for every single job you apply to.
That last part is important. Tailoring takes a few extra minutes per application, but it’s usually the difference between being filtered out and landing in the “yes” pile.
A Few Extra Tips Before You Hit Apply
Save your final resume as a .docx file unless the job posting specifically asks for a PDF. Most ATS software reads Word files reliably, while some older systems still struggle with certain PDFs.
Name your file clearly, something like “FirstName-LastName-Resume.docx.” It looks professional and makes you easier to find.
Always read the final output yourself before sending it. Claude is great at structure and wording, but you’re the only one who knows if every detail is accurate. A resume that’s optimized but untrue will fall apart in the interview.
Finally, keep a master copy of your resume with everything included. Use it as the starting point every time you tailor a version for a new job.
Job hunting is stressful enough without a piece of software silently rejecting you. These three Claude prompts take the guesswork out of writing an ATS friendly resume, whether you’re starting fresh, tailoring for a dream role, or trying to figure out why you’re not hearing back.
Try them out, adjust the details for your industry, and give your resume the best possible chance of reaching a real human being.
Good luck with your job search!
If you’d like, I can put this in a Markdown file or a doc so it’s easier to copy into your CMS.