How to tailor your resume to a job description

A generic resume is written to be acceptable for many jobs, so it rarely looks like the best fit for any of them. Two things go wrong:

• The reader can't find the match. A hiring manager looking for “stakeholder management” and “SQL” will skim for those. If your resume says “worked with business teams” and “databases”, the match is there but invisible.
• The software ranks you lower. Many employers use an applicant tracking system (ATS) that lets recruiters search and filter applications by keywords and job titles. If the post's words aren't on your resume, you may not come up.

Our ATS resume tips explain what that software actually does. The short version: it rewards resumes that use the job post's language for skills you really have.

Copy the job post into a document and go through it with two highlighters, or two colors of bold:

1. Must-haves: skills, tools, qualifications or experience the post says are required, or repeats more than once.
2. Nice-to-haves: anything marked preferred, desirable, a plus, or mentioned once near the end.
3. The job title exactly as written, and any alternative title used in the text.
4. Clues about the work: the problems they mention, the team you would join, the results they care about.

Here is a short, made-up job post and what you would pull out of it:

Tailoring is fast when you start from a longer master document rather than from your last application. Your master resume holds every job, project, bullet, skill and certification you might ever use, with more bullets per job than would fit on one page.

For each application you copy the master, then choose and order. This is far quicker than trying to remember, under pressure, the project you did two years ago that happens to fit this job perfectly.

Every time you finish a project or hit a target at work, add a bullet to your master resume that week, with the numbers. Six months later you won't remember them.

You don't need to touch every line. These five places do almost all the work.

1. Headline and summary

Use the job title from the post, and put the two or three must-haves you are strongest in into your summary.

Our resume headline examples and the free resume summary generator help with the wording.

2. Skills section

Move the must-haves you have to the front of the list, in the post's words. Remove skills that are irrelevant to this job if the list is long; nobody hiring a data analyst needs to know you can use Canva.

3. The order of your bullets

Under each job, put the bullet most relevant to this post first. Recruiters often read only the first one or two bullets per role.

4. The wording of your bullets

Where you did what the post describes, describe it in similar terms. Don't copy the post's sentences; use its nouns.

5. What you leave out

Bullets that are true but irrelevant take space from ones that matter. For a customer insights role, a bullet about managing office supplies can go, even if you were proud of it.

Matching keywords is about using the employer's vocabulary for things you have actually done. A few rules keep it honest and effective:

• Use the exact phrase when it fits. If the post says “stakeholder management”, use that phrase in a bullet where you managed stakeholders.
• Write both the acronym and the full term once: “search engine optimization (SEO)”, “applicant tracking system (ATS)”. Recruiters search for either.
• Match job titles where they are equivalent. If your title was “Analyst II” and the post says “Data Analyst”, you can write “Data Analyst (Analyst II)”.
• Put keywords in context. A skill used in a bullet is evidence; the same skill only in a list is a claim.
• Leave out what you can't do. If the post asks for Tableau and you have only used Power BI, say Power BI. In an interview you will be asked about every keyword on your page.

Our list of skills to put on a resume helps you name the skills you have in the words employers use.

Here is one job from a resume, before and after tailoring it to the Data Analyst post above.

Nothing in the second version is invented. The same work is described in the post's language, the most relevant results come first, and the knowledge-base bullet, true but unrelated, has made way for the Python bullet that covers a nice-to-have. For more bullets like these, see the data analyst resume example.

Once your master resume exists, each application looks like this:

1. Mark the must-haves, nice-to-haves and job title in the post (3 minutes).
2. Copy your master resume and update the headline and summary (3 minutes).
3. Reorder and trim the skills list (2 minutes).
4. Choose and reorder bullets under each job, adjusting wording to match (5 minutes).
5. Run the resume and the post through the free ATS checker to see which keywords are still missing, and fix any you genuinely have (2 minutes).

Save each version with the company in the file name (Priya-Shah-Resume-ShopKart.pdf) so you know exactly what you sent when they call.

Not every application deserves the same effort. Match the time to the opportunity:

For similar roles (say, five data analyst jobs in e-commerce), make one tailored version and reuse it, changing only the job title and company name each time.

• Keyword stuffing. Repeating “SQL” fifteen times or adding a block of keywords at the bottom makes the resume unreadable to the human who reads it next.
• Hidden text. White-on-white keywords are an old trick. Recruiters can see them when the text is copied or parsed, and it ends the application.
• Copying the post's sentences. Pasting the employer's own description of the job into your bullets reads as exactly what it is.
• Claiming must-haves you don't have. If you lack one requirement, apply anyway when you meet most of the others, and show your nearest experience honestly.
• Forgetting to update the company name. If your summary or cover letter names a company, check it before every send.

A clean, single-column layout such as our ATS resume templates makes sure the software reads everything you tailored.