Career level: how your résumé is pitched at the right seniority

Every résumé in your Résumé bank carries a career level badge, and every job description you paste on Optimize gets one too, a moment after you paste it. They are read from responsibilities, scope and decisions, not from job titles: a "Manager" title does not prove people management, and a "Principal" is not an executive.

The two badges

• Your résumé reads: the level your experience demonstrates today, on its track (individual contributor, technical, functional or project leadership, people management, executive).
• Role asks for: the level the posting really needs, which can differ from its title, and the voice a résumé for it should have.

Between them you see Level aligned, Stretch role (the role sits above how you read today) or Step down (you read above it). Tap the small "i" beside a badge for the detail: the band, the operational, tactical and strategic balance, and the kinds of leadership involved.

What the rewrite does with it

Quick Match and Detailed Match both write to the role's level and voice: the identity, the balance of hands-on and strategic language, how achievements are built, and what to avoid. For a stretch role, your proven scope, ownership and decisions are framed at that level. They are never inflated with invented titles, team sizes or figures. For a step down, hands-on delivery leads.

When the résumé is finished, it is read again with your job titles hidden, so the work itself decides the level. If some lines still read off-level, only those lines are repositioned, every fact kept, and checked once more. The result shows Career level alignment: where you started, what the role asked, and how the tailored résumé reads.

Good to know

The badges are free, and the same document is never read twice. They guide the writing; nothing from them is added to your résumé as a claim.