How to Tailor Your CV for Every Job (Without Spending Hours on It)
A generic CV loses to a tailored one every time. Here's a practical system for customising your CV for each application — quickly and effectively.
By FitMyCV Team
Why generic CVs fail
Most people send the same CV to every job. It seems efficient, but it’s actually costing you interviews.
Recruiters and ATS software both compare your CV against the specific job description. A generic CV might be 40% relevant to a role. A tailored one can hit 80–90%. That gap is the difference between getting screened out and getting called.
What “tailoring” actually means
Tailoring doesn’t mean rewriting your entire CV for each job. It means targeted adjustments in three areas:
1. Your professional summary
Rewrite your 3–4 line summary to reflect the specific role. If the job asks for “a strategic finance leader with M&A experience,” your summary should use those exact phrases — if they’re true of you.
2. Your skills section
Reorder and adjust your skills to front-load what the job requires. If the job description emphasises Tableau over Excel, list Tableau first.
3. Your bullet points
For your two or three most recent roles, swap in bullet points that are most relevant to the target position. You don’t need to change all of them. Adjusting two or three per role already makes a noticeable difference.
The keyword matching method
The fastest way to tailor a CV:
- Copy the job description into a text document
- Highlight every skill, tool, qualification, and responsibility
- Check which ones appear in your CV
- Add the missing ones (only if true) in your skills or bullet points using the exact same phrasing
This is what ATS systems do when they score your application. Match the language, not just the concepts.
How long should tailoring take?
With a well-organised base CV: 15–20 minutes per application. If it’s taking longer, your base CV probably needs reorganising first.
The case for a “master CV”
Keep a master CV document with every role, bullet point, and skill you might include. When applying for a specific job, copy it and cut it down to the most relevant version. You’re editing, not writing from scratch.
What AI changes here
Instead of manually comparing a job description to your CV line by line, you can let a tool do the analysis and generate a tailored version in minutes.
FitMyCV does this: paste your CV, paste the job offer, and get back a tailored CV scored for ATS compatibility with relevant keywords incorporated naturally.