How to Tailor Your CV to a Job Description

Why the same CV fails for different jobs

Your CV is read twice before anyone decides to call you. First, at most medium and large employers, by screening software that compares it against the job description. Then by a person who gives it a short first look, checking whether you have the things they listed.

Both readers are looking for the same thing: evidence of what the advert asked for. A general CV might contain all of it, buried in the fourth bullet of your second job and described in different words. The software may not match it, and the person will not dig for it.

Tailoring fixes that. You move the relevant experience to where it will be seen and describe it in the employer's terms, without adding anything you have not done.

Reading the advert properly

Before you touch the CV, spend five minutes on the advert with a pen or a blank document.

• Separate essential from desirable. Many Irish adverts list them separately. The essential ones are what shortlisting is based on.
• Note the order. Requirements listed first are usually the ones that matter most to the person who wrote the advert.
• Copy out their exact words for skills, systems and qualifications. If they say "stakeholder management", that is the phrase to use, if it is true of you, rather than "working with other departments".
• Look for repeated words. Anything that appears two or three times in one advert is a priority.
• Check the job title. If your current title is different but the work is the same, you will want to make that clear in the profile.

You should end up with a short list of five to eight requirements. That list drives every change you make.

Keep a master CV

Keep one longer version of your CV that holds everything: every role, every result you can remember, every course and system. It can run to three or four pages, because nobody else will ever see it.

Each application then starts from a copy of the master. You choose what goes in, trim it to two pages, and save it under a new name. This is much faster than editing last week's tailored version, which will have lost things you now need.

What to change for each job

Four places, in order of how much difference they make:

1. The profile. The two to four lines at the top. Rewrite them for each application so they name the type of role and the two or three requirements you match best. This is the part read most carefully, so it is worth the most time. Our personal profile guide has examples.
2. The order of your bullet points. Within each role, move the bullets that match the advert to the top. The reader may only get through the first two or three.
3. The wording of your bullet points. Where you did what they ask for, describe it in their words. Same facts, same numbers, the employer's vocabulary.
4. The skills section. Make sure every skill and system from your short list that you have appears, spelled the way the advert spells it. Remove skills that are irrelevant to this job, to give the relevant ones room.

Older roles and anything irrelevant can be cut down to a title, employer and dates. That is often how you get a tailored CV back to two pages.

A worked example

Part of an advert for an operations coordinator role:

A bullet from the applicant's master CV, and the same bullet tailored:

Nothing has been invented. The facts were already in her experience. The tailored version leads with the advert's own word, "coordinated", says how many sites, makes the stakeholder side visible, and names Excel. It moves to the top of her current role, and her supplier work, which was lower down, moves up to second.

What never to change

• Job titles. Your title is what your employer called you. If it undersells the job, explain the scope in the bullets or the profile, and leave the title as it was. References and background checks will compare it.
• Dates. Never adjust them to hide a gap or stretch a role. Our guide to returning to work after a gap shows how to handle a gap honestly.
• Skills you do not have. Matching the advert's words only works when the words are true. A skill you cannot talk about at interview will cost you more than leaving it out.
• The format. Keep the same clean layout for every application. Tailoring is about content. Our ATS CV format guide covers the layout that survives screening.

Once you have done it two or three times, tailoring takes around twenty minutes per application. Name each file after yourself and save it with the employer's name in your own folder, so you know which version went where if they call you.