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How to tailor your CV to a job description

Sending the same CV to every job is the most common reason good candidates hear nothing back. This guide shows how to adapt your CV for each role in a way that helps both screening software and the person reading it, without overstating what you've done.

1. Understand how screening works

Most mid-size and large employers use an applicant tracking system (ATS) such as Workday, Greenhouse, Lever or Taleo. The ATS turns your CV into text, splits it into fields like job titles, dates and skills, and lets recruiters search and filter candidates. If the terms a recruiter searches for aren't in your CV, you're less likely to come up, even with the right experience.

Two things follow from that:

  • Format for parsing. Use one column, standard headings (Summary, Experience, Education, Skills), and real text rather than images or text boxes.
  • Use the posting's language. If the job says "stakeholder management" and you wrote "working with clients", use their phrase where it's accurate.

2. Find the keywords that matter

Read the posting and pick out:

  • Hard skills and tools: software, languages, methods, certifications (for example SQL, Figma, IFRS, PRINCE2).
  • The job title itself and close variants.
  • Repeated phrases: anything mentioned more than once, or listed under "requirements" rather than "nice to have".

Aim to cover the requirements you genuinely meet. Ignore the ones you don't; adding them is easy to spot in an interview.

3. Rewrite your summary for the role

Your summary is the first thing a recruiter reads. In two or three sentences, say what you do, at what level, and the two or three strengths most relevant to this job, using the posting's terms.

4. Reorder and sharpen your bullets

  • Move the bullets that best prove you fit this job to the top of each role.
  • Start with a strong verb and say what changed because of your work.
  • Keep real numbers; don't invent new ones.
  • Cut or shorten bullets that don't help for this application.

5. Match your skills section

List the skills from the posting that you actually have first, using the same spelling ("JavaScript", not "JS", if that's what they wrote).

6. Write a cover letter for the same role

Pick two or three requirements from the posting and give a short example for each from your experience. Keep it under a page.

Do it in a minute instead of an hour

Cooked does steps 2 to 6 for you: paste the job link, attach your CV, and you get a tailored CV, a cover letter, and a list of the keywords you cover and miss. Try it free.