Someone's cousin works at Google.
You have Cheatcode.
The people who move fast early aren't smarter. They just have someone to ask. Cheatcode gives you 1-on-1 time with people 5–10 years ahead of you — the ones who've read your resume from the other side of the table.
Free to start. Sign in with Google or your phone number.
Arjun Kapoor
Product Manager · Swiggy
August
Available slots
Rhea Sharma
SDE-2 at Razorpay · Online
TODAY
Hey Ananya — got your booking for Wednesday. Anything you want me to look at before we talk?
Hi Rhea — final year at VIT, applying for backend roles.
Nice. How many have you applied to, and how many replied?
Around 40 sent. 2 replies.
That ratio is almost never the candidate. It's the resume not being read properly. Send it across?
Ananya_Resume.pdf
184 KB · ATS score 61
Found it. Your skills sit in a sidebar, so the parser reads them into the middle of your job history.
Put everything in one column instead. That one change usually takes a resume from 61 to about 85.
Bengaluru
Find your person
Rhea Sharma
SDE-2 · Razorpay
₹499
30 min
Arjun Kapoor
PM · Swiggy
₹699
30 min
Meera Nair
Data · Flipkart
Free
30 min
You're not underqualified. You're under-advised.
Every rejection teaches you nothing, because nobody explains it. The gap between you and the person who got the offer usually isn't talent. It's information.
400+
applications sent
Three replies.
Nobody told you 75% of resumes are filtered by software before a human ever opens them. You kept applying harder instead of differently.
₹8 LPA
on the offer letter
₹52,400 in your account.
You said yes to a number you didn't understand. Gratuity, variable pay, that 'retention bonus' in year two — someone should have walked you through it.
4 rounds
cleared
Rejected. No reason given.
HR won't tell you. Your friends can't. So you guess, change five things at once, and repeat the same mistake in the next interview.
How it works
Three steps. No networking required.
01
Say where you're stuck
Not a form with forty fields. One screen: what you're trying to do, and what's not working. Resume dying silently. Two offers, no clue which. Six months in and already lost.
Bengaluru
Find your person
Rhea Sharma
SDE-2 · Razorpay
₹499
30 min
Arjun Kapoor
PM · Swiggy
₹699
30 min
Meera Nair
Data · Flipkart
Free
30 min
02
We match you with someone who's been there
Not a life coach. Someone 5–10 years into the exact path you're on — who has sat on hiring panels, written the rejection emails, and made the same mistakes before you.
Arjun Kapoor
Product Manager · Swiggy
August
Available slots
03
30 minutes. Straight answers.
No motivational speech. You leave with the specific thing to change, why it matters, and what to do this week. Come back when you're stuck again.
Rhea Sharma
SDE-2 at Razorpay · Online
TODAY
Hey Ananya — got your booking for Wednesday. Anything you want me to look at before we talk?
Hi Rhea — final year at VIT, applying for backend roles.
Nice. How many have you applied to, and how many replied?
Around 40 sent. 2 replies.
That ratio is almost never the candidate. It's the resume not being read properly. Send it across?
Ananya_Resume.pdf
184 KB · ATS score 61
Found it. Your skills sit in a sidebar, so the parser reads them into the middle of your job history.
Put everything in one column instead. That one change usually takes a resume from 61 to about 85.
The questions you'd never ask out loud.
Not on LinkedIn, where your batchmates are watching. Not to a recruiter who's screening you. To one person, privately, who has no reason to lie to you.
- Is 6 LPA bad in 2026?
- Should I take the service company offer?
- How do I explain a 6-month gap?
- Do I need DSA if I want backend?
- Is my resume the problem, or is it me?
- My manager ignores me. Is that normal?
- Should I do a master's or keep working?
- How much should I ask for?
- Everyone's switching. Should I?
- Am I too late at 24?
The people you'll talk to
Not gurus. Not influencers. People with a job, five years ahead of yours.
Everyone selling career advice online is selling a course. Our mentors still work the job. That's the whole difference — they know what hiring looks like this year, not the year they got lucky.
- RS
SDE-2, fintech
7 yrs in industry
Has been on 200+ interview panels. Knows exactly which line of your resume gets you skipped.
- AK
Product Manager, marketplace
9 yrs in industry
Switched from engineering at year four. The person to ask if you're wondering whether you're in the wrong role.
- MN
Data Scientist, consumer app
6 yrs in industry
Started at a service company like most people do. Knows how to make that jump actually happen.
- PT
Engineering Manager, SaaS
11 yrs in industry
Approves the offers. Will tell you what your salary negotiation sounded like from the other side.
- SV
Designer, health tech
8 yrs in industry
Built a portfolio with zero agency experience. Reviews yours the way a hiring manager actually reads it.
- DJ
Backend Engineer, retail
6 yrs in industry
Failed 40 interviews before the one that worked. Has the honest version of that story.
Why this and not that
You've already tried the free stuff.
It didn't work because none of it was about you. Advice only becomes useful when the person giving it has seen your actual resume, your actual offer, your actual situation.
Free advice on YouTube
Made for a million people. None of them are you. Great for context, useless for your specific rejection.
Cold DMs on LinkedIn
A 4% reply rate, and the replies are polite non-answers. Nobody owes a stranger the honest version.
College placement cell
Optimised for the placement percentage on the brochure, not for the next ten years of your career.
Paid career 'courses'
₹40,000 for recorded videos and a community tab. Sold by people who left the industry years ago.
Cheatcode
One person, still in the industry, who looks at your specific situation for thirty minutes and tells you the truth. That used to be a family connection. Now it's a booking.
The second half
A mentor can't fix what a machine already deleted.
Before any of this becomes a conversation, your resume has to survive software that never reads a sentence. Most don't. That's not a talent problem — it's a formatting problem nobody told you about.
So we're building the other half: a resume tool that gets you into the room. The mentor is what happens once you're in.
Ananya_Resume.pdf
Two things are costing you
Fix these and the score moves to 84
Breakdown
01
See what the software sees
Upload the resume you're already sending. Get the version a screening system reads — the parts it skipped, the sections it couldn't find, the score it hands the recruiter before a human opens anything.
02
Fixes, not advice
Not "add more keywords". The actual line, rewritten, with the reason. You approve each change or you don't. Nothing is edited behind your back.
03
Start from nothing
No resume yet, or one built in Canva that falls apart when parsed? Build from a format that survives the machine — and still looks like it was made by a person.
04
One role at a time
Paste the job description. Your resume reshapes itself for that one posting — the same experience, ordered and worded for what that specific team is screening on.
Both come with the same free account — you pick what you use first.
Sign up freeFree guides
Start with what nobody told you.
Resumes, ATS, interviews, salary and the job hunt — written for Indian students and people in their first two years of work. Free, no signup.
- Interviews11 min
ai interview questions: what Indian interviewers really test
Interviewers across Indian companies have added one theme to almost every round: how do you actually use AI in your work? Most candidates either hide their usage or oversell it. Here is what the question is really testing, and how to answer it like someone who has thought about it.
- Salary10 min
20 LPA In Hand Salary: The Full Monthly Breakup
A ₹20,00,000 CTC pays about ₹1,44,351 a month, not ₹1,66,667. Here is the complete line-by-line breakup, the tax slab working, and why the take-home ratio keeps falling as your CTC climbs.
- Formats13 min
Resume for Job Switch: What to Change When You Already Have a Job
The resume that got you your current job is the wrong document for leaving it. What changes when you are proving level rather than capability, how to translate a services-company designation, and why notice period and CTC belong nowhere near the page.
- AI Search11 min
Will AI Replace Data Analysts? An Honest Answer for India
AI already handles much of a junior analyst's day. That is observable, not speculation. Here is what it still cannot do, why the risk sits at the entry level in India, and the one shift that keeps an analytics career safe.
- AI Search9 min
Prompt engineering jobs in India: a career, or a skill inside other careers?
Prompt engineering is a real skill with a shrinking moat and no standalone career ladder in India. Here is what the work actually involves, how to check any course's job-market claim yourself in ten minutes, and what to learn instead.
- Salary9 min
15 LPA In Hand Salary: Full Breakup, Tax and Monthly Take-Home
A ₹15,00,000 CTC pays roughly ₹1,11,072 a month in hand. Here is the full breakup, the income tax working, and why ₹15 LPA is the package where the section 87A rebate stops protecting you.
Questions, answered.
What is Cheatcode building, exactly?
Two things that solve two halves of the same problem. Mentor sessions — 30 minutes with someone 5–10 years ahead of you. And a resume tool that scores what you're already sending, rewrites the lines that are costing you, builds one from scratch if you don't have it, and reshapes it for a specific job description. The resume gets you into the room; the mentor is what happens once you're in.
Will the resume tool be free?
Free while we're in early access. After that it moves to a subscription — we'd rather say that now than surprise you later. Mentor sessions are priced separately. You'll know the numbers before you're ever asked for a card.
Who is Cheatcode actually for?
Final-year students and people in their first two years of work. If you're figuring out placements, your first switch, or whether the job you took was a mistake — that's exactly the window we're built for.
How is this different from free advice online?
General advice is written for a million people. A mentor looks at your resume, your offer, your situation and tells you the specific thing to change. That's a different kind of answer.
Who are the mentors?
People with 5–10+ years of experience who still work in the industry. Most have sat on hiring panels, reviewed resumes, and made the decisions you're currently guessing about.
What does it cost?
Early access is free while we're building. We'll tell you well before that changes — and you'll never be charged without asking first.
What can I actually ask?
Anything you'd ask an older sibling in the industry. Why you keep getting rejected, whether an offer is fair, if you should switch, how to handle a manager, whether you're behind. Nothing is too small or too obvious.
When does it open?
We're onboarding mentors first — a good mentor pool matters more than a fast launch. Join the list and you'll be in the first batch we let in.
Stop guessing what everyone else already knows.
One account, both things — the mentor sessions and the resume builder. Make it in about ten seconds and start with the resume.
Free to start · Google or phone sign-in · No spam, ever