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Resume guides

How to tailor a resume to a job description

Read the posting, close the real gaps, mirror honest vocabulary — and never stuff keywords you do not have.

Tailoring is not rewriting. It is reordering and rewording so the parts of your record that matter most to this employer appear first.

The twenty-minute method

  1. Highlight the posting's responsibilities in one colour and its requirements in another.
  2. Mark each one: have I done this, or have I done something close?
  3. Move the evidence you marked to the top of your experience bullets.
  4. Rewrite your summary using the posting's own vocabulary — where it is true.
  5. Add genuinely missing skills to your skills list, and leave out the ones you do not have.
  6. Run the matcher to confirm coverage, then check the ATS report.

Where a gap is real

Say so in the cover letter rather than fudging the resume: "My experience is in B2B SaaS rather than marketplace products, but the payments work transfers directly." Specific honesty reads as confidence.

What to never do

  • Hidden white keywords
  • A paragraph of posting vocabulary with no context
  • Claiming tools you have only watched a tutorial for
  • Changing your job titles to match theirs