Most résumé “reviews” are evaluations. Someone reads your résumé in a vacuum and tells you it’s “good” or “needs work.” The advice is generic because the input is generic — there’s no JD, no role context, no specific filter to test against.
A failure analysis is different. It tests your résumé against one specific job description and tells you exactly which signals will trigger rejection. With evidence.
The 4-axis failure analysis
The diagnostic reads on four axes:
- Seniority — does your altitude match the role’s?
- Relevance — does your domain map?
- Execution — does your verb density match the JD?
- Keywords — least important, but checked.
For each axis, the failure analysis surfaces:
- The signal value (Risk / Warn / Good).
- The evidence (specific bullets from your résumé, specific lines from the JD).
- The leverage edits to flip the read.
Why “your formatting is good” is useless
Formatting catches you on edge cases (a 12pt résumé in a 10pt world). It doesn’t catch the systematic causes — and the systematic causes are 90% of the rejections.
A real failure analysis names the systematic cause and tells you what to do about it.