Does your resume prove what the job is asking for?
Only if the lines on it show you doing the work at the level the job needs. Having the job description's words on your resume isn't the same thing. A requirement is proven when a bullet shows a decision you made, what was riding on it and what came of it, and the bigger and more independent the decision, the higher the level it shows.
What's the difference between mentioning something and proving it?
Take a posting that wants someone to own a multi-million dollar operating budget. Here are two lines that would both satisfy a keyword checker:
Responsible for the departmental budget.
Took over a $4M operating budget running 9% over, renegotiated three vendor contracts and closed the year 2% under without cutting staff.
The first line tells a reader the budget was in your job description. The second tells them you made calls on it with real money at stake, and how it turned out. Both have the word budget in them, so a keyword checker scores them the same, but a hiring manager reading for a senior role doesn't, and neither does anyone paid to find the person who can actually do the job.
Level comes from the same place. Following the budget process someone else set up is real work, it's just early-stage work. Taking over a budget that's in trouble and deciding what to cut is a different level of the same skill, and the only way a reader can tell which one you did is if the line says so.
How do you check your own resume?
You can do this by hand with the posting in one window and your resume in the other.
- Pull out what the job actually can't be done without. Skip the boilerplate about culture and benefits. Most postings come down to six to eight real capabilities once you strip the padding.
- For each one, find the line on your resume that shows it. Not the skills section, a line in your work history.
- Ask that line three questions. Did I make a decision here, or carry out someone else's? What was riding on it, in money or people or scope? What happened because of it?
- If the line can't answer them, it's mentioning the skill, not showing it. If you did more than the line says, rewrite it to say what you did. If you didn't do it, leave it as a gap, because a gap you can talk about in an interview is better than a line you can't defend.
The hard part isn't the method, it's being honest about level. Most of us read our own resume knowing what was behind each line, and a stranger reading it only gets what's on the page.
Why doesn't a keyword checker answer this?
Because it's counting words, and that's by design. Jobscan describes its match rate as built from hard skills, soft skills and other keywords from the posting, and says measurable results aren't factored in. Teal's Match Score depends on how many of the posting's keywords you've included. That's useful when you did the work and described it in different words than the posting uses, but it can't tell the two budget lines above apart, and pushing more of the posting's words into your resume to raise the number is a big part of why so many resumes now read the same.
I've put a side-by-side of how Jobscan, Teal, ResumeAtlas, Marovi and MPE each decide a requirement is met, from their own published descriptions, on a separate page.
Where does MPE come in?
I built MPE after sending more than 5,000 applications of my own and hearing back on about 1% of them, with no way of knowing which of my lines were doing any work. It does the read above the same way every time.
You paste the job description and upload your resume. MPE pulls out the capabilities the job needs, up to eight, works out the level each one asks for, then reads your resume for evidence of each on the six-stage Dreyfus scale, from Novice to Mastery. The report shows every capability, the level your resume shows against the level the job asks for, the gap where there is one and the lines from your resume each score came from, with a stated confidence where the evidence is thin.
The Dreyfus scale is a published model of how people move from following rules to working from experience. MPE uses the six-stage version Rousse and Dreyfus set out in 2021. It gives every capability a defined yardstick, so you can see why a line scored where it did instead of getting a number with no reasoning behind it.
What won't this tell you?
MPE only reads what's written. If you did the work and never put it on your resume, it can't credit it. It doesn't know you as a person, and it doesn't decide whether you get the job. It tells you what your resume shows a stranger about your ability to do this one, which is the read every recruiter and hiring manager does before they ever talk to you.
Check your resume against a real posting. Six free credits when you sign up, no card.
Common questions
Is a high match score the same as proving I can do the job?
No. Most match scores count how many of the posting's words appear on your resume. A resume can carry every word and still show nothing about the level of work you did.
Does listing a skill in my skills section count?
It counts for a keyword checker. It doesn't show a reader that you used the skill, what was riding on it or how it turned out. That takes a bullet in your work history.
Should I add keywords from the job description to my resume?
If the posting uses different words for work you actually did, describing your work in its words is fair. Adding words for work you didn't do gives you a line you can't defend in an interview.
What is the Dreyfus scale?
A published model of how people move from following rules as a novice to working from experience as an expert. MPE uses the six-stage version, from Novice to Mastery, to score each capability a job needs.
How can I check what level my resume shows for a specific job?
Run it through MPE at mpe-copilot.com. You get each capability the job needs, the level your resume shows against the level asked for and the lines it used.
Sources: Jobscan, Jobscan Tutorial. Teal, Using Matching Mode. Both accessed October 20, 2026.