How to tailor your CV to each job ad without making anything up

Why it is worth tailoring

Whoever screens applications reads the job title, the first few lines and the last two roles first. If what the ad asks for is not there, the rest of the CV barely gets read. And before that person there is usually an applicant tracking system (ATS) that people search by keyword: if the ad says "vendor management" and your CV says "supplier relationships", that search will not find you.

A generic CV makes the reader do the work of translating your experience into their ad. Hardly anyone does. A tailored CV arrives already translated.

What changes and what does not

The words, the order and the emphasis change. The facts do not: your roles, employers, dates, qualifications and what you actually did are the same in every version. If a fact changes from one version to another, it is no longer tailoring, it is a problem.

• Changes: the headline, the profile at the top, the order of achievements within each role, the names of the tools and which skills come first.
• Does not change: job titles, employers, dates, qualifications, languages and levels, figures.

Step 1. Read the ad and split must-haves from nice-to-haves

Put what the ad presents as a requirement ("essential", "required", "at least X years of") in one list, and what it treats as a bonus ("desirable", "a plus", "nice to have") in another. Almost every ad mixes the two, and they do not weigh the same: requirements decide whether you get past the first screen; nice-to-haves decide who gets called first.

Step 2. Write down the exact words the ad uses

Copy the job title, the tools, the tasks and the sectors exactly as written. Keep their vocabulary: if it says "Google Ads", do not write "paid search campaigns"; if it says "customer service", do not write "support". Those are the words someone will type into the ATS search box.

Step 3. Match that list against what you have already done

For each word on the list, find where in your experience you really did it, even if you described it differently. You will find three cases:

• It is already in your CV in the same words: leave it alone.
• You did it but described it another way: rewrite it with the ad's term. This is most of the tailoring.
• You have not done it: it does not go in. If it is a requirement, take it as a sign that the role may not be for you, or that it needs explaining in your cover letter.

Step 4. Adjust the headline and the profile

The headline is the line under your name. If your real job title is close to the ad's, use the ad's wording as long as it is the same job. If it is not, do not give yourself a title you never held: describe what you do ("Digital marketing | paid media and analytics").

The profile, the three or four lines at the top, should answer what the ad is asking. If it wants team management, say so in the first sentence, with the size of the team you actually ran.

Step 5. Reorder the achievements in each role

Within each role, the achievement closest to the ad goes first. Nobody reads the fifth bullet of a job from six years ago. If an achievement has nothing to do with this ad, it can drop lower or leave this version altogether: leaving something out is not making something up.

Step 6. Name tools the way the industry names them

Skills and tools go by their proper names: Excel, Salesforce, SQL, SAP, Figma. Put first the ones the ad mentions and that you genuinely use. A list of twenty tools in no particular order says less than five well chosen ones.

The line worth not crossing

Adding something you have not done to get through the filter raises your odds at the first stage and sinks them at interview, which is where it shows. The trick of hiding keywords in white text on a white background has been detectable for years and in many companies is grounds for rejection.

The same goes for levels: if your Spanish is intermediate, do not turn it into fluent because the ad asks for it. The honest version of your experience, told well, fits far more ads than it seems.

A before and after example

Ad: "Digital Marketing Manager. Essential: running Google Ads and Meta campaigns, analysis in GA4, owning a budget. Desirable: e-commerce experience."

Before: "Online communications officer. Looked after search and social ads and the monthly reports."

After: "Digital marketing | paid media and analytics. Ran Google Ads and Meta campaigns on a monthly budget of €8,000 and measured results in GA4 for the online shop."

Nothing the person did has changed. What changed is that the ad and the CV now speak the same language, and the important part is in the first line.

How long it takes

By hand, 20 to 40 minutes per ad the first time, and less once you have a tidy base. That is why it pays to apply to fewer, better chosen roles: eight tailored applications usually bring more interviews than thirty identical ones.