5 Reasons to Tailor a CV – Nearly Every Time

Choosing to tailor a CV to match the demands of each role makes sense on every level.

The hiring manager will only be interested in the specific aspects of your experience relevant to the role they are hiring for. They won’t dig too deeply into other areas. No matter how proud you are of a particular achievement, you might consider leaving it out if it isn’t relevant for a specific future employer. 

The practical aspects of tailoring every section should be straightforward if you look at your application from the hiring manager’s perspective. Which parts of your experience would jump off the page for them? Which aspects of your personality would best fit their culture? Are you able to tick every single box from the job description?

Tailoring your CV makes sense, but doing it properly takes a lot of time. A lot. But is it worth the time? Surely a stellar CV doesn’t have to be 100% relevant.

5 reasons to tailor a CV

Tailoring your CV proves your interest in the role. If you only focus on your most relevant experiences, your CV will read like a love letter to the position. It will stand out amongst all the other generic CVs, and it will set the hiring manager’s mind into overdrive about which aspects to explore in an interview. Creating such a tailored CV takes time. It will show your alignment with the role and your determination to secure it.

Tailoring a CV is an act of personal commitment. Not only are you showing the employer that you are keen on the role, deciding to spend some time on tailoring a CV is a personal choice to give it all you have got. If you are not sure whether it is worth tailoring a CV for a certain role, maybe the role isn’t right for you? These decisions could save you precious time in the long run. You owe it to yourself to be efficient in your job search.

The act of tailoring the CV will prepare you for an interview. Tailoring a CV takes serious thought. This will pay off at a later stage, so when you seek to distil only your most relevant value into a brief document, so many thoughts flit through your head. You might not deem them important enough to put down on paper. When it comes to an interview, the complicated act of tailoring your CV will come in very useful indeed. 

Tailoring your CV will help you get past the ATS. Most applicant tracking software applications will rank your CV in terms of your suitability for the role. If your experience is not an obvious fit at first glance, tailoring your CV with more keywords and experiences from the job description will give you a better chance of impressing the AI. Don’t go overboard with using the exact keywords, though. That may seem contrived.

Tailoring a fit

Only tailor a CV for roles where you are an 80% fit. There may be some roles where you do not have relevant experience across the duration of your career. This does not mean that you shouldn’t apply. You may have enough experience from one standout employer to be a perfect candidate, so make the most of this space and if you can’t tailor certain aspects of other roles, don’t put lipstick on a pig – leave them unembellished. Don’t be tempted to lie.

Ensure that you save tailored CVs with individual employer names in the titles. There is nothing worse than sending off the wrong CV to a new interviewer later in the process.

Each job you apply for can consume vast amounts of your time as the process plays out. Tailoring your CV will only take up a small fraction of the total time spent on a role, but it offers an undue advantage. If you want the job, it is a no-brainer.

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This blog is shared with Job Seeker Duetists.

Written by former recruitment ghostwriter Paul Drury (not AI).