How to tailor your resume to a job description

Read the whole job description once without editing anything. Then sort what it asks for into three groups. Keeping these groups apart stops you from rewriting your whole resume around a line that was only background.

Copy the requirements into a short list in your own notes. You will use it in the next step.

• Essential: requirements stated as must-have, required, or repeated in several places. These decide whether the application is considered.
• Nice to have: items marked preferred, desirable or a plus. Useful if you have them, not a reason to stop if you do not.
• Context: the team, the product, the tools they use and how the work is organised. This helps you choose which examples to put first.

For every essential requirement, write three things side by side: the requirement, a specific example from your work, and the wording you will use. If you cannot write a real example, the requirement goes on a separate list of gaps. Do not fill it in with a guess.

Illustrative example: the vacancy asks for ‘stakeholder communication’. Your example is the weekly delivery update you sent to department leads. Your wording might become ‘Shared weekly delivery updates with department leads’, which describes what you did and lets the reader connect it to the requirement.

Evidence is anything you can describe and discuss in an interview: a responsibility you held, a project you worked on, a tool you used regularly, a qualification you hold. Only use figures you can stand behind.

Most tailoring happens in a few places. You are changing emphasis and wording, not your history.

• Summary: rewrite the opening two or three lines so they describe the experience most relevant to this role.
• Bullet order: within each job, move the bullets that match essential requirements to the top. Cut or shorten bullets that do not help this application.
• Skills section: list the skills from your map that you can support, in the order that matters for this vacancy.
• Terminology: where you did the same thing under a different name, use the employer’s term if it is accurate. For example, if they say ‘customer onboarding’ and you called it ‘client setup’, either phrase can be true; choose the one the reader will recognise.
• Section headings: use plain headings such as Experience, Education and Skills so the structure is easy to read and to extract as text.

Some details must stay exactly as they are, whatever the vacancy says. A requirement in a job description is not evidence that you meet it.

• Dates of employment and education.
• Job titles and employer names. If your title was unusual, you can add a short plain description, but keep the real title.
• Credentials, licences and certifications: list only those you hold, and mark any still in progress as in progress.
• Scope: the size of a team, budget or project, and whether you led the work or contributed to it.
• Skills you have not used. Adding a keyword you cannot support creates a problem at the interview stage.

Every candidate has gaps against some vacancies. You have three honest options, and you can combine them.

• Leave it out. If a gap is minor or a nice-to-have, the resume does not need to mention it.
• Address it in the cover letter. For an essential requirement, a sentence about related experience or what you are doing to learn it is better than silence or an invented claim.
• Prepare to discuss it. Expect interview questions about gaps and plan a short, factual answer.

Read the vacancy again for application instructions. Some employers ask for a particular file type, a page limit or a specific file name. Follow those instructions over any general advice.

Open the file you are about to send and read it in full. Check names, dates, contact details and spelling. Make sure the summary and the cover letter describe the same experience as the rest of the resume.

Upload your resume as a text-based PDF, DOCX or TXT file up to 5 MB and 10 pages, or paste the text. Paste the job description, or import it from a public HTTPS job page. RoleCarta prepares a tailored resume, a cover letter, a keyword review and eight interview questions.

The kit shows before-and-after changes with a reason for each, the vacancy phrases found or not found in your draft, and a list of information to review. Missing requirements are listed for you to consider; they are not added to your resume as skills. If a draft introduces a number that is not in your source resume, it is rejected and your kit credit is returned.

Edit the resume and cover letter, check every fact, then download PDF, DOCX or TXT. Editing and downloading do not use another kit credit. You can try one kit as a guest, and a free account includes 2 kits a month.

• Resume tailoring: Use it when you have found a vacancy and want a focused, editable version of your resume built only from experience you already have.
• Keyword gaps: Use it to separate the vacancy terms you can support with real examples from the gaps you should leave out or discuss honestly.
• Cover letter: Use it when an employer asks for a letter and you want a draft that links their requirements to evidence already in your resume.
• How the RoleCarta resume check works
• Profession guides