How to tailor your CV to a job description

Tailoring starts before you open your CV. Most job adverts mix three things: what the role genuinely needs, what would be nice to have, and lines about the company that every advert from that employer repeats. Treat them all as equal and you end up chasing every word. Sort them first and you know exactly where your CV has to be strong.

Read the advert twice. The first pass is for the shape of the job: its level, who it reports to, and the problem it exists to solve. The second pass is for detail. Note each requirement and mark it as essential or desirable. Many UK adverts say this outright, under headings such as "essential" and "desirable" or "what you will bring". Where they do not, the wording usually gives it away: "must have" is firmer than "ideally" or "a bonus".

• Underline the skills and tools named more than once. Repetition is the clearest signal of what matters.
• Note the level. Words such as lead, own, manage or support tell you how senior your examples need to be.
• Look for the problem behind the role, such as a new team, a backlog, a migration or growth. Your best evidence speaks to that.
• Copy out the exact terms the advert uses. You will want them later, for the parts that are true of you.

Now take the essential requirements one at a time and find the strongest true example of each in your own history: a project, a responsibility, a result. Write the pairing down, even roughly, with the requirement on the left and your evidence on the right. This list is the backbone of the tailored CV, and it doubles as your preparation for the interview.

Some requirements will have no honest match. That is useful information, not a problem to hide. A gap on a desirable skill rarely matters. A gap on an essential one is worth weighing before you spend an evening on the application. If you are close, say through a related tool or a smaller version of the same responsibility, describe what you have done plainly and let the reader judge the overlap.

• Prefer recent, specific examples over older or vaguer ones.
• Use results where you have them: what changed because of your work.
• Count transferable experience. Running a busy rota in retail is real evidence of planning under pressure.
• Never add a skill, tool or qualification you do not have. It surfaces in the first conversation.

A recruiter reading at speed decides in the top third of the first page whether to keep going, so that is where tailoring earns the most. Rewrite your personal profile, the three or four lines under your name, so it describes the person this advert is looking for, using only facts about you. If the role is about building a team, lead with the team you built. If it is about a particular sector, say how long you have worked in it.

If you use a key skills section, reorder it so the skills the advert repeats come first, in the advert's own words where they are true of you. "Stakeholder management" and "working with teams across the business" can describe the same thing, so pick the phrase the employer used.

• Keep your job titles as they were. Retitling a role to match the advert misleads, and a reference check can show it.
• Swap adjectives for evidence. "Led a team of six" says more than "strong leader".
• Keep the profile short. Three or four lines that fit this role beat a paragraph that fits any role.

Your work history stays in reverse date order. What changes is the order inside each role. Move the bullets that answer the advert's essentials to the top of each job, and let the rest drop down or go. A reader who sees the relevant achievement first in every role does not have to hunt for the match.

Trimming is part of tailoring. Two sides of A4 is the usual length for a UK CV, so every line spent on something this employer will not value pushes out something they would. Older roles can shrink to a line or two, and early jobs that do not bear on this application can be summarised together.

1. For each role, mark the bullets that answer an essential requirement.
2. Move them to the top, strongest first.
3. Cut or shorten the bullets that serve no requirement on the advert.
4. Check that each bullet that survives ends on a result, not just a duty.

Before you send it, read the tailored CV once as the hiring manager would, with the advert open beside it. Can you find evidence for each essential requirement within a minute? Does anything claim more than you could talk about comfortably in an interview? Is anything left over from the last application, such as another company's name in your profile? That last one happens more often than people admit.

Then check it for the software. Tailoring changes words, never layout: no tables, text boxes or columns that an applicant tracking system might read in the wrong order. Save it with a sensible file name, such as your name and the role, and keep a copy of exactly what you sent. If you are invited to interview, that is the version the panel will be holding.

• Every essential requirement has visible evidence.
• Nothing claims more than you could defend in an interview.
• No leftovers from another application.
• A simple layout, saved as .docx or a text-based PDF unless the advert asks for something else.
• A copy kept with the employer's name and the date you sent it.