What HireKey evaluates
HireKey compares the requirements in a job description with the experience documented by the candidate. The purpose is not to reproduce an employer's private hiring process or predict a recruiter's decision with certainty. It is to help candidates understand where their application appears strong, where the evidence is unclear, and where a genuine qualification gap may exist.
Role relevance
How directly the candidate's recent experience maps to the role's responsibilities, skills, domain, and stated requirements.
Seniority and scope
Whether the resume demonstrates the ownership, complexity, leadership, scale, and decision-making expected at the stated level.
Evidence of impact
Whether the candidate shows what they personally contributed and what changed because of their work, rather than listing responsibilities alone.
Qualification gaps
Which requirements appear supported, which may be addressed through clearer positioning, and which should remain visible and honest.
Communication clarity
Whether a recruiter can quickly understand the candidate's relevant experience, level, contribution, and results.
The two-stage alignment process
HireKey establishes the original alignment before generated rewriting begins. This preserves a consistent baseline and allows the candidate to see what changed after supported experience is communicated more clearly.
Original alignment
A rules-based comparison evaluates the submitted resume against the job description before any content is rewritten.
Revised alignment
HireKey helps clarify supported experience, then reports the updated alignment with an explanation of the material changes.
A stronger after score does not mean the candidate gained new experience. It means the revised resume communicates relevant, existing experience more clearly.
Gap Honesty: not every gap means the same thing
HireKey groups gaps by how materially they may affect the application. These categories are directional guidance, not a prediction of what every employer will decide.
A core requirement appears unsupported and may materially prevent the application from advancing.
Relevant or adjacent evidence may exist, but the connection needs clearer positioning or context.
The requirement appears preferred, learnable, or unlikely to determine the initial decision by itself.
A communication problem can often be improved. An experience gap cannot be solved through rewriting, and HireKey should not pretend otherwise.
Improving without inventing
Every material claim in a HireKey rewrite must remain grounded in information the candidate has provided. HireKey can clarify, reorganize, and strengthen truthful evidence. It should not create responsibilities, results, skills, or levels of ownership that are absent from the source information.
A contributing role cannot automatically become ownership or leadership.
Missing metrics, business results, qualifications, or technical skills cannot be invented.
Adjacent experience may be positioned honestly, but it should not be presented as direct experience when it is not.
If important context is missing, the candidate should supply it rather than allowing the system to assume it.
What HireKey cannot guarantee
Employer processes differ by company, role, applicant pool, recruiter, hiring manager, and technology configuration. HireKey therefore does not claim to reproduce every employer's evaluation or guarantee a particular outcome.
HireKey does not know an employer's complete internal screening criteria, issue a score on the employer's behalf, guarantee ATS parsing, predict interviews or offers, or turn an unsupported qualification into a real one. Its guidance depends on the resume, job description, and additional context supplied by the candidate.
Nela Davis is a former tech recruiter with 10 years of recruiting experience, including experience evaluating candidates for roles at Microsoft and Amazon. She developed HireKey's recruiter-informed methodology based on how she assessed candidates for role relevance, seniority, evidence of impact, qualification gaps, and communication clarity.
Know your gaps before a recruiter does
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