How to tailor your CV to any job ad

Most CVs are written once and sent everywhere. That is the single biggest reason a strong candidate does not get a call: the CV describes a general version of them, and the job ad describes a specific role, and the two do not obviously match when someone, or something, reads them side by side.

Tailoring fixes that, and it is a smaller job than it sounds. This is the general method, whether the ad came from a company careers page, LinkedIn, Indeed or SEEK.

Step 1: Turn the ad into a checklist

Every job ad is really two lists wearing paragraph clothing: what is required, and what is preferred. Read it once for the story, then read it again with a highlighter and pull out:

• The exact job title.
• Every skill, tool or qualification named as a requirement.
• Anything repeated more than once. Repetition is a signal, not padding.
• The verbs used for the day to day work (leads, manages, coordinates, delivers).

Write these down. This is your target list, and everything else in this guide works from it.

Step 2: Match your experience to their words

This is the part people call CV keyword matching, and it is simpler than the name suggests: for each requirement you genuinely meet, check that your CV says it in the ad's own words, not a synonym.

If the ad says "stakeholder engagement" and your CV says "liaised with senior managers," change it to name stakeholder engagement directly. An Applicant Tracking System (ATS) and a time-poor recruiter are both doing literal matching, not comprehension. Neither one knows the two phrases mean the same thing. You do, so make the connection for them.

What keywords should I actually add to my CV?

Only ones that are true. The list from Step 1 is a checklist, not a shopping list: add a keyword to your CV because you can point to where you did that work, not because it appeared in the ad. A keyword you cannot back up in an interview costs you more than a CV without it, because now you are explaining a gap live, in front of the person deciding.

The keywords worth adding are the ones sitting in the gap between what you have genuinely done and the words you happened to use for it. That is the entire exercise.

Step 3: Rewrite the top third for this role

Your summary and your most recent role are read first and skimmed hardest. They should not be generic. In three or four sentences, the summary should sound like it was written for this job, not lightly edited from the last one.

If the ad is for a customer success role, lead with retention, renewal and relationship management. Save the parts of your background that are not relevant for a line further down, not the top.

Step 4: Lead every bullet with the result

• Weak: "Responsible for managing the social media accounts."
• Strong: "Grew Instagram engagement 62% in six months by shifting to short-form video."

A number survives a skim. A responsibility statement does not, because it reads the same on every CV in the pile.

Stuck on one specific bullet? Paste it into the free bullet rewriter for three stronger versions, working only from what you already wrote.

Step 5: Keep the format readable by software and people

• A single column layout, standard headings, and a Word document or a text-based PDF, not a scanned image.
• Nothing that matters hidden in a table, header, footer or text box. Those are the elements most likely to be dropped when a document is converted to text.
• Australian English and conventions: organise, colour, state abbreviations (NSW, VIC, QLD, WA, SA, ACT, TAS, NT), and two to three pages rather than the American one page rule.

Step 6: Check the match before you send it

Everything above is judgement until you can see the actual score. Paste the job ad and your tailored CV into CVelo's free checker and you will get a match score, the specific keywords still missing, and a rewritten version to compare against what you just wrote by hand.

Check your CV against any job ad, free →

Ten to fifteen minutes per application is the real cost of tailoring properly. It is also, reliably, the difference between a CV that reads as generic and one that reads as an answer to the specific job in front of you.