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Resume Scorecard: Rate Yours Out Of 100

Aarav sent 60 applications in August. Two replies, both rejections. Riya sent 15 and got four interview calls. Same college, same CGPA, same stack. Riya's resume simply scored higher on the ten things Priya, the recruiter, actually looks at.

9 min readFree, no email neededUpdated 11 September 2026

Step 1 · Resume

How to score

📩

Aarav sent 60 applications in August. Two replies, both rejections. Riya sent 15 and got four interview calls. Same college, same CGPA, same stack. Riya's resume simply scored higher on the ten things Priya, the recruiter, actually looks at.

Your resume has ten sections. Each is worth ten points. Score every one using the three descriptions on the next pages: what 10 looks like, what 5 looks like, what 0 looks like. If you are between two, take the lower number. Honest scores fix resumes; kind scores do not.

10Nothing to fix. Priya would not pause on this section.
5Present, but weak. The kind of thing that gets skipped, not rejected.
0Missing, wrong, or the kind of mistake that ends the six seconds early.

Score first, then read the fixes. Most students land between 45 and 65 the first time. That is normal. It is also fixable in a weekend.

1

Format, contact

Sections 1 – 220 points
01

Format

The software test
10
One page, one column, Calibri or Arial at 10.5–11 pt, 0.5–0.75 inch margins. Saved as PDF under 1 MB, named Firstname_Lastname_Resume.pdf. Copy-pasting it into Notepad keeps the order.
5
One page, but two columns, a sidebar or a Canva template with icons. Looks nice to you; the ATS software reads it in the wrong order.
0
Two pages, or a Word file, or a photo, skill bars and colour blocks. File name "resume final (2).docx".
FIX
Rebuild in a plain single-column template. Delete the photo, icons and bars. Export as PDF. Run the Notepad copy-paste test before every upload.
02

Contact line

Two lines, six things
10
Name · phone · a firstname.lastname email · LinkedIn · GitHub · city. Two lines under your name. Every link is clickable and opens a clean profile.
5
An email like coolboy_2003@gmail.com, links pasted as plain text that do not click, or GitHub missing altogether.
0
Date of birth, father's name, full home address, marital status, a "Curriculum Vitae" heading, and no links at all.
FIX
Make a new Gmail: firstname.lastname. Insert links as hyperlinks (Ctrl+K in Word). Delete everything a recruiter cannot use to contact you.
2

Summary, education

Sections 3 – 420 points
03

Summary

Two lines, one number
10
Two lines: who you are, your stack, one proof. "Final-year CSE student. Built 3 full-stack apps in React and Node, one used by 200+ students. Looking for an SDE role from June 2026."
5
An "Objective: seeking a challenging role in a reputed organisation where I can grow" paragraph that could belong to anyone in your batch. No summary at all also scores 5: nothing wrong, nothing gained.
0
Four lines of adjectives: hardworking, passionate, quick learner, team player, dedicated. Not one of them can be verified.
FIX
Fill this: "[Year] [degree] student. Built [n] projects in [stack]; [your best number]. Looking for [role] from [month]." Delete every adjective.
04

Education

One line each
10
"B.Tech CSE, XYZ College, 2023–2027 · CGPA 8.2/10". Newest first. Class 12 only if it is 90%+. Three lines, maximum.
5
A good CGPA left out, or Class 10 and 12 with board name, school name and "First division". Education eating six to eight lines.
0
Education at the top taking a quarter of the page, marks written as "First class with distinction", a backlog history, or a CGPA that is not true.
FIX
One line per qualification: degree, college, years, CGPA if 7.0 or above. Below 7.0, leave the number off unless the job post asks. Move the section below Projects.
3

Projects, skills

Sections 5 – 620 points
05

Projects

Where Priya spends four of six seconds
10
Two projects, three bullets each. Live link and GitHub link on the title line. Every bullet reads "Did X, measured by Y, by doing Z", has a number, and names the stack.
5
Two or three projects, but bullets list features: "has login, dashboard and search". No numbers. Links missing. One of them is a tutorial with the name changed.
0
Five one-line projects. Or "To-do app, Weather app, Netflix clone". Nothing deployed anywhere.
FIX
Keep the best two. Deploy them on Vercel or Render this week. Rewrite every bullet: "Built a bill-splitting app used by 40 hostel students; cut settle-up time by 80% with a min-transactions algorithm. React, Node, PostgreSQL."
06

Skills

Every skill is a question
10
Six to eight skills, grouped Languages · Frameworks · Databases · Tools. You can answer three interview questions on each one, today.
5
Ten to twelve skills, some learnt last week. "MS Office", "C basics", "familiar with Docker".
0
Twenty-plus skills, percentage bars, and "Machine Learning, Blockchain, Cloud" with no project that uses any of them.
FIX
Run the question test on every skill: three questions you could answer now? Keep. Otherwise delete. Remove Office, typing speed and Windows. Never write a percentage.
4

Experience, wins

Sections 7 – 820 points
07

Experience or substitutes

Anything that produced something
10
An internship, freelance work, teaching, an open-source pull request or a college tech role, with dates and two XYZ bullets each. "Built the fest registration site used by 1,200 students; zero downtime on event day. Next.js, Supabase."
5
Company name and "worked on backend", no bullets, no result, no dates. Or a four-week certificate course listed as experience.
0
"Fresher, no experience" written on the page. Or an internship that did not happen, which one phone call will find out.
FIX
Substitutes count: a website for a local shop, the club's tech head role, a hackathon team, a TA post. Same XYZ bullets. Truly nothing? Delete the heading and move Projects up. An empty section scores 0; a missing one costs nothing else.
08

Achievements

Ranks, not certificates
10
Two to four lines with a rank or number: "Top 5% of 12,000 in TCS CodeVita Round 1", "Winner, college hackathon 2025 (48 teams)", "LeetCode rating 1,640".
5
Udemy and Coursera certificates with no rank. "Participated in Smart India Hackathon." A scholarship with no detail.
0
Participation certificates, school prizes, "attended a workshop on AI", or a Hobbies section in this slot.
FIX
Keep only wins, ranks, ratings and scholarships. None yet? Pick one this month: a contest rating or a hackathon. Until then, delete the section rather than pad it.

Your score table

Print this page. Score today in the first column. Fix, then score again in the second. Write the fix you will make next to each section.

#
Section
Today
Re-score
01
Formatone page, one column, PDF
/10
/10
02
Contact lineemail, links, city
/10
/10
03
Summarytwo lines, one number
/10
/10
04
Educationone line each, CGPA
/10
/10
05
Projects2 × 3 XYZ bullets, live links
/10
/10
06
Skills6–8, grouped, defendable
/10
/10
07
Experience or substitutesdated, with results
/10
/10
08
Achievementsranks and numbers only
/10
/10
09
Linkscustom URL, pinned repos
/10
/10
10
Languageverbs, tense, spelling
/10
/10
TOTAL
/100
/100

Scored on: ____ / ____ / 2026   ·   Re-scored on: ____ / ____ / 2026   ·   Seen by a placed senior: yes / no

Score in pairs. Swap with a classmate and score each other's. Riya gave Aarav's a 41; he had given himself 48. Hers was the closer number.

What your total means

90+

Apply anywhere. Campus drives, off-campus, product companies, referrals. Stop editing the resume; spend the time on DSA and mock interviews instead.

70–89

Fix your two lowest sections, then re-score. One evening. Almost always it is Projects (bullets with no numbers) and Skills (too many). Do not touch the sections that already score 8 or more.

<70

Rewrite from a plain template. Keep your facts, drop the design. It takes about three hours and it is the best three hours of your placement season. Re-score when done; expect 75 or more.

Aarav, first score: 48

Format 4 · Contact 6 · Summary 2 · Education 8 · Projects 4 · Skills 3 · Experience 5 · Achievements 5 · Links 5 · Language 6

Aarav, one weekend later: 86

Format 10 · Contact 10 · Summary 8 · Education 9 · Projects 8 · Skills 9 · Experience 7 · Achievements 6 · Links 10 · Language 9

He changed no facts. He cut twelve skills to seven, rewrote six project bullets with numbers, deployed both projects, and deleted his objective. Four interview calls the next month.

Go further

The scorecard tells you where the points are. These give you the words to earn them. Comment the keyword on any Pwscoding reel to get the link.

  • ATS Resume Template + 100 XYZ Bullets ATSA clean Word template filled with a real fresher example, plus 100 ready bullets across 10 categories. Fixes sections 1, 3, 5 and 10 in one go. ₹199.
  • 5 Portfolio Projects That Get Interviews PROJECTSIf Projects scored 5 or less. ₹249.
  • 30 Referral Scripts REFEROnce you are at 90: get the resume to a human, not the software. ₹299.
  • Placement Kit, everything KITAll eight paid guides in one download. ₹999.

Free companion: the Fresher Resume Checklist (25 points) goes deeper on each section. Same store, same price: nothing.

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