When you're ready to apply · 6 min read
How do I tailor my CV to a job description?
List what the post asks for, find where your CV already shows it, then say it in the post's words. Change the wording, never the facts.
The short answer
Read the job post and list its must-haves: the skills, tools and experience it names more than once or marks as required. Then go through your CV and find where each one already appears, even under a different name. Reword those lines in the post's language, move the most relevant ones up, and cut what this employer won't care about. Change how you describe your work, never what you did.
On this page 5 sections
A tailored CV doesn't claim anything new. It makes the overlap between your experience and the job easy to see, for software that searches for the post's words and for a person skimming for thirty seconds.
List what the post asks for
Copy the post into a document and highlight every skill, tool, qualification and kind of experience it names. Mark the ones it calls required, and the ones it mentions more than once. Those are the must-haves. Everything else is nice to have.
Find where your CV already shows each one
Go down the must-haves one at a time and look for the line in your CV that proves it. Often it's there under another name: "stakeholder management" written as "worked with five teams", or "forecasting" written as "planned next quarter's stock". Note the ones you can't find anywhere.
| The post says | Your CV said | Tailored line |
|---|---|---|
| SQL and dashboards | Built reports for the pricing team | Built SQL reports and dashboards for the pricing team |
| A/B testing | Ran experiments on onboarding | Ran A/B tests on onboarding with product and design |
| Forecasting | Nothing | Leave it off, and prepare to talk about it |
Say it in their words, then reorder
- Swap your phrasing for the post's where both mean the same thing.
- Move the lines that prove must-haves to the top of each job.
- Rewrite the summary in two sentences that name the role and the two must-haves you show best.
- Cut lines this employer won't care about to keep the CV to one or two pages.
Check it before you send it
Read every changed line and ask whether you could talk about it for a minute in an interview. If you couldn't, put it back how it was. Then check the file name and format the post asks for; a PDF is usually safe unless it says otherwise.
OffLadder CV is our free Chrome extension for this step. Open a job post and it lists the post's must-haves, shows which ones your CV already mentions, and rewrites your CV for that job. It checks every change against the CV you gave it, so it never adds experience you don't have.
Questions people ask
- How much should I change my CV for each job?
- Usually the summary, the order of your bullet points and the wording of five to ten lines. Your jobs, dates and results stay the same. If you're rewriting more than that, the role may be further from your experience than it looks.
- Is it dishonest to copy words from the job description?
- Not when the words describe something you did. If you built reports and the post says dashboards, and your reports were dashboards, use their word. Adding a skill you don't have is where it stops being honest.
- Should I keep one master CV?
- Yes. Keep a long version with everything you've done, and cut a tailored copy from it for each post. It's faster than editing the last tailored version, and you don't lose lines you removed for a different job.
- What if the post asks for something I haven't done?
- Leave it off the CV. If it's a small gap, mention in the cover letter how you'd close it, or do a short piece of practice work you can talk about in the interview.
- Can a tool tailor my CV for me?
- OffLadder CV is our free Chrome extension for this step. Open a job post and it lists the post's must-haves, shows which ones your CV already mentions, and rewrites your CV for that job. It checks every change against the CV you gave it, so it never adds experience you don't have.
Exercises are practice, not evidence of career fit or a qualification. How to read our guides and report a correction.
How this page is written
Sources support the factual background, not a guarantee that an exercise predicts career fit. Fictional practice material is labelled. Dates record content updates; no independent expert review is implied. More about OffLadder.