Guides & how-tos
How to check your resume against a Singapore job description
Assess job fit by comparing the role’s requirements with specific evidence from your work, projects and qualifications. Separate a missing description from a missing skill. Use a match score to guide your review; it is not an ATS pass percentage or a prediction of interview or hiring success.
1. Read the role before reading the score
For a Singapore vacancy, start with the actual job description. Identify the main tasks, named tools, relevant qualifications and stated experience level. Mark requirements that the employer explicitly calls mandatory. Keep preferences separate, and flag ambiguous wording for clarification instead of treating your interpretation as a confirmed requirement.
Also record practical details such as the work location, working arrangement and duties you would actually want to perform. A strong keyword overlap cannot decide whether the day-to-day job suits your goals. Use this information to judge the opportunity alongside the evidence in your resume.
2. Build a requirement-to-evidence table
Use one row per requirement. Record a specific example and label its limits. A project or internship can provide relevant evidence, but describe it as a project or internship. Do not quietly convert coursework into commercial experience or a supporting role into ownership.
| Job requirement | Available evidence | Resume action |
|---|---|---|
| Excel reporting | Prepared a weekly stock report in Excel during an internship. | Name the tool and report under that internship. |
| SQL | Used joins in a university database project. | Describe project use; do not claim workplace expertise. |
| Tableau dashboards | No completed work using Tableau. | Keep this as a gap; do not add Tableau as a skill. |
3. Understand what a match score measures
Workforce Singapore describes MyCareersFuture’s skills match score as an estimate of how listed skills match the skills required for a role, intended to support self-assessment. That is a specific explanation of MyCareersFuture’s measure, not a universal definition for every resume tool. Read Workforce Singapore’s explanation of skills match scores
OfferPilots calculates its job match score in code by comparing extracted job keywords with your saved profile. It shows matched and missing terms. The number depends on those inputs and the matching rules, so incomplete profile information or different wording can affect what is recognised.
A score is not an ATS pass percentage, an employer’s assessment, or your probability of getting an interview or being hired. A matched term also does not establish depth of experience. Review the evidence behind the result and check whether it supports the level of work the employer needs.
4. Decide what kind of gap you have
- An omitted fact: you have done the work but left it out. Add a specific, accurate example to your saved profile and resume.
- Related experience: you used a different tool or worked in another setting. Explain the transferable task and keep the distinction visible.
- A real skill gap: there is no supporting experience yet. Keep it out of your claimed skills and consider a concrete learning project.
Give mandatory requirements special attention. If a condition is unclear, seek clarification through the employer’s stated contact route. Decide whether to apply using the full role and your circumstances; do not rely on an arbitrary score cutoff or change facts to push the number higher.
5. Turn the review into a focused application
After saving a job in OfferPilots, compare its requirements with your reviewed profile. Correct genuine omissions, then tailor the resume around the strongest relevant evidence. Read each generated bullet against its original experience. Keep ownership, dates, tools and results accurate, including when you switch between English and Chinese.
6. Prepare to explain the evidence
For each important requirement, prepare a short account of the situation, your own action and the outcome you can substantiate. If a result was not measured, explain what you completed. Save the submitted resume and job description together so that interview preparation starts from the same claims the employer received.