Top Tips On How To Tailor Your CV For A Job

How often do you tailor-make your CV to fit a specific job? Majority of the candidates I interact with only have one CV that they use to apply for all job openings. You could be missing out on interviews because of not taking time to write your CV to fit a specific role. Your CV should act as a marketing tool. It should provide answers as to why you are a suitable candidate for the role.

Below are some tips you can use to tailor-make your CV

1. Study the job description. The first step is to understand the requirements of the employer as outlined in the job advert and have the same on your CV. Look at the top five duties and ensure that the same roles are appearing on your CV. It doesn’t have to be word for word but present it in such a way that whoever is reading your CV is convinced that this is something you are currently doing or have done. I am assuming that you are familiar with the roles otherwise if you lie on your CV, you won’t be as lucky during the interview stage.

2. Highlight pertinent skills. Everyone has lots of skills they like to include in their CV, but not all skills are relevant to every job. It’s best to only list the skills that are in the job advert or that you can clearly see you would use from the job advert. It’s great that you’re certified to use a bulldozer, but there’s no need to mention it for an office-based role.

3. Don’t waste space on irrelevant roles. While you should always list the roles on your CV in a chronological order, you don’t have to write the same amount about each position. For some jobs, just a single line is enough. This way, you have more space to talk about the roles and accomplishments you want to highlight. For instance, if you’re applying to be an Administration Manager, detailing your experience as a Personal Assistant is great, but if you’re applying to be a Sales Manager but at one point you were a Personal Assistant, one line will suffice.

4. Use wordings in the job description. Reusing specific words or phrases from the job advertisement ensures that the employer will find what they’re looking for in your CV. This makes things easy for them, and people like reading familiar phrases. Just make sure you’re not regurgitating the job description verbatim – you don’t want to make it obvious. For instance, if the job description says they’re looking for someone who can “identify new markets”, pick out a time you’ve done that in a past role and start your description of it with “Identified new markets”.

5. Quantify and qualify – make sure you add contextual information about your achievements and activities in previous jobs, especially where they support your application and demonstrate your understanding of the job in question. For example: I increased new business sales by 32% between 2014 and 2015 or I supervised a team of 3 people within the marketing department.

‘One-size-fits-all’ CVs are unlikely to get you far in today’s job market. Worse still, the ‘Apply Now’ buttons on online websites that people click and upload generic CVs are, in my opinion, the quickest route to the ‘No’ pile.
Just as what you wear to an interview is important, the same is true for your CV. Whenever you send out an application, first take a step back and look at your CV. Think about how you’ll be perceived by the advertiser, and what you want to change or highlight to make yourself into a more desirable candidate.

This means you may write a different CV for every role you apply to. By making your CV specific to the role, you’ll increase your chances of getting noticed.

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