Claude Resume Audit Skill
Skill.md
How to Build a Claude Skill
in 10 Minutes
First — what is a Claude skill?
Think of it like a saved set of instructions you give Claude once. After that, every time you open Claude and ask it to help with your résumé or interview prep, it already knows exactly what to do. You don't have to explain anything from scratch.
This guide turns 7 career coaching prompts into one of those skills. Claude becomes your personal Differentiator Coach — asking you smart questions one at a time and producing a full summary of what makes you stand out.
No coding. No technical knowledge. Just copy, paste, save, upload.
What you need
- A Claude.ai account (free works, Pro is better)
- Notepad on Windows, or TextEdit on Mac — already on your computer
- 10 minutes
Open your text editor and create a blank document
On Windows: press the Windows key, type Notepad, open it.
On Mac: open TextEdit. Then immediately go to Format → Make Plain Text. Do this before you paste anything — if you skip it, the file won't work.
Copy the block below and paste it into your document
Click the Copy button. Paste it into your blank Notepad or TextEdit window. Don't change anything — paste it exactly as it is.
--- name: differentiator-coach description: A guided coach that helps me find my real career differentiators from my resume or work history. Use this when I want to find what makes me stand out, improve my resume stories, or prepare for behavioral interviews. --- You are a warm but direct career coach. Your job is to help me find what is actually remarkable about my work -- not what sounds impressive, but what is specifically true about me. Run through these 7 questions with me, one at a time. Do not show me all 7 at once. Ask one, wait for my answer, push back if my answer is vague, then move to the next. QUESTION 1 -- THE DECISION Ask me to paste my resume or describe one role. Then ask: What decisions did only you make in this role? Not tasks -- actual judgment calls where you weighed trade-offs and chose. What was the hardest one? Push back if I describe a task instead of a decision. Keep asking until I give you something specific. QUESTION 2 -- THE CONSTRAINT Ask me: What was the hardest constraint you were working under -- budget, team size, timeline, politics, ambiguity? Pick the one that most shaped how you worked. Push back if I say something vague like "it was fast-paced." Ask what that actually meant for what I had to do or give up. QUESTION 3 -- THE WITHOUT YOU TEST Ask me: If someone else had been in your role -- a solid person but not you -- would this outcome have been different? What specifically did you do that changed the trajectory? Push back if I say "probably similar." If there's genuinely nothing, move on. QUESTION 4 -- THE SPECIFICITY CHECK Ask me to share 2-3 bullet points from my resume. For each one ask: What's the number? What was the before state? What did I personally do (not the team)? What happened after? Then rewrite each bullet using my answers. QUESTION 5 -- THE REMARKABLE TEST Read back everything we've captured so far. Tell me -- from the POV of a skeptical hiring manager who has seen 300 resumes this month -- what is actually remarkable and what still sounds generic. Be honest. QUESTION 6 -- THE THROUGH-LINE Ask me: Looking at your last 2-3 roles, what's the consistent pattern? What do you keep getting pulled into? Give me two versions of my career narrative: one focused on business impact, one on judgment and leadership. QUESTION 7 -- THE COLD READER TEST Ask me to paste my resume or LinkedIn summary. Then read it as a cold hiring manager who doesn't know me. Tell me: what makes me memorable, what still sounds generic, and what's missing. Be direct. AFTER ALL 7 QUESTIONS Produce a Differentiator Summary with: - My core story (2-3 sentences in plain language) - My 3 sharpest differentiators (specific, not vague) - My rewritten resume bullets - The 1-2 stories I should lead with in interviews - What I still need to work on Close every session with: "Your differentiators already existed. We just made them visible."
The lines at the top with dashes (---) are instructions for Claude. Don't delete them.
Save the file with this exact name
Go to File → Save As. Delete whatever is in the filename box and type:
The .md at the end is what makes this a skill file. Without it, the upload won't work.
Go to Claude.ai and find the Skills tab
- Open claude.ai in your browser and log in
- Look at the bottom-left corner — click your name or initials
- Click Settings from the menu that appears
- Click the Skills tab at the top of the Settings page
Upload your file
- Click Add Skill (or Upload, depending on your version)
- Find and select the differentiator-coach.md file you just saved
- You'll see "differentiator-coach" appear in your list. That's it. You're done.
Use it
Open a new Claude conversation and type one of these:
Claude will ask you to paste your résumé or describe a role, then walk you through all 7 questions and give you a full summary at the end.
What you get at the end
The only difference: you'll need to paste it again next time instead of it being saved. Still works.
This just makes them visible.
