How to tailor your CV to job roles efficiently

How to tailor your CV to your job roles efficiently

There are numerous benefits to taking the time to tailor your CV effectively to job roles you are applying to. Not least, it highlights to an employer or recruiter that you have carefully considered the job role, the associated responsibilities, and what they are looking for in their ideal candidate. Whilst tailoring your CV for applications might be time consuming, nurturing this important skill as part of your approach will ensure you stand out to employers and that you are utilising your time constructively.

Read our guide now to find out how to tailor your CV to job roles efficiently.

How to approach tailoring your CV

Consider the steps below to tailor your CV content for each application you make:

Step 1. Ensure you have fully understood the job role and requirements

This will involve carefully reading over the role description, including typical tasks and responsibilities, as well as the person specification, which outlines what the employer is looking for in their ideal candidate.

As you go through this information, have a highlighter or a notebook to hand to jot down particular skills, experience and knowledge they have specified where you can see strong alignment with what you have to offer.

Step 2. Consider the information in line with the current version of your CV

Once you have established what the employer or recruiter is looking for, it will be essential to review your general CV to start to tailor your information to their needs.

Highlight your key skills, experience and qualifications as part of your initial summary or profile, emphasising straight away that you have what the organisation wants. Consider the experience you have currently described on your CV and its alignment with some of the tasks and responsibilities involved with the position you are applying to. Where possible, include examples of where you have carried out similar tasks to what they have described.

Step 3. Review the order of your content

It will be essential to ensure your most relevant information appears on the first page of your CV. This will include summarising key information within your profile, as well as highlighting your most relevant experience and qualifications.

This might require you to break down your work history or voluntary roles under “Relevant Experience” and “Other Experience” headings, with the former, ideally, starting towards the bottom of your first page.

Your breakdown of your education and qualifications might also benefit from being split, again, ensuring your most recent and/or relevant qualification(s) appear on your first page, with other less relevant certifications being noted on your second page under an “Additional Information” section.

Step 4. Edit your work history

Don’t feel tempted to include every position you have ever worked in as part of your CV – firstly, there won’t always be scope for this, and secondly, you will want to customise your content based on the relevance of your experience. You can always indicate “Full work history available upon request”.

Look to include those roles and organisations where there is alignment of skills, qualities and abilities and ensure your bullet-pointed content under each utilises the keywords from both the job description and the person specification.

By using this specific language, it will highlight to the reader that you will start in the role with the required skills and experience. Also, look to review the ordering of your bullet-pointed content, ensuring you incorporate the most relevant responsibilities, tasks or achievements first; evidencing your suitability straight away.

Step 5. Aim to evidence impact

Wherever possible, avoid the employer or recruiter needing to “infer” information from your content. You can avoid this by ensuring two things:

1. Use varied and impactful vocabulary, including action verbs to describe what you did and what you achieved through the task or responsibility, alongside an adverb, wherever possible.
2. Incorporate measurable results, which offer tangible evidence of the impact of your own actions or contributions.

For example, to address both of the above, rather than simply stating “worked with colleagues to complete task X”, consider “Collaborated effectively with colleagues to develop a social media campaign, which resulted in a 10% increase in followers across social media platforms.”

Overall, this will demonstrate to the employer that you can reflect on your own performance and consider the broader impact you have had on the work environment.

Step 6. Check and re-check your content

It should go without saying that proofreading your applications, including your CV, is an essential final step, but this will be particularly important when taking the time to tailor your content for each individual opportunity.

This will include spelling and grammar errors, but also ensuring you have reflected the employer’s keywords and phrases used within the job advert and information provided.

Beyond increasing your chances of getting through any initial screening processes – with some employers using AI to check your application for relevance – you will want to use language that is specific enough to grab the reader’s attention. Whether your application is considered by a representative from Human Resources, a dedicated hiring manager, or employees you will be working with day to day, seeing familiar phrases will demonstrate to them that you understand the requirements of the role and the organisation’s needs.

Why does tailoring your CV matter?

Though tailoring your CV content for job roles can be incredibly time-consuming, there will be multiple advantages to enacting the steps outlined above:

• A tailored CV proves to an employer from the outset that you have the skills, knowledge and expertise they are seeking and you have previously utilised these to produce high-quality and high-impact results at work.
• You will stand out from those candidates who simply haven’t taken the time to properly consider the alignment of their skills and experience with the opportunities they are applying to. This process will also help you to identify those positions that might not offer the best or right fit for you, especially if, as you start to review your general content, you establish you do not fully meet the employer’s requirements.
• By taking the time to tailor your CV you will also prove to an employer that you are genuinely interested in and enthusiastic about the role, ensuring you showcase your true “fit” for the position and the organisation. Recruiters will appreciate the effort you have taken to produce a tailored application and you will be saving them valuable time by ensuring they don’t have to “assume” or “infer” information from your content.
• Importantly, many organisations – though typically larger employers – are utilising AI through applicant tracking systems to initially scan applications, before determining whether candidates reach the next stage of their recruitment process. By using keywords from the job description and person specification, you will improve the chances of your CV being considered and progressing through the hiring process.

Overall, it is important not to underestimate the value of the time spent tailoring your CV for future job applications. By taking the time and carefully considering what you can offer an employer in line with their requirements, you will put yourself in a much stronger position to be identified as a suitable candidate to invite to interview.

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