How to tailor your resume to a job description without making things up

Keywords are the words the job is described in. Ten minutes with the post finds them:

1. 1

   Copy the requirements and responsibilities into a note

   Leave out the company blurb and the benefits.
2. 2

   Mark the must-haves

   The job title, anything after “must”, “required” or “you have”, and whatever the post repeats.
3. 3

   Mark the tools and methods

   Languages, software and ways of working: SQL, Figma, Tally, A/B testing, AutoCAD, REST APIs.
4. 4

   Mark the domain words

   What they make and for whom: payments, B2B SaaS, logistics, ed-tech, small lenders.
5. 5

   Next to each, write where it is true for you

   A project, an internship, a course project, a job. The words with nothing next to them are your gaps.

A keyword extractor or an AI chat tool can list the words for you. Only you can say which of them are true, and that is the step that matters. If the gaps are many, read should you apply if you don’t meet all the requirements first.

• Put the project or job that matches the post’s main need first in its section, even if it isn’t your newest.
• Inside each item, move the bullet that matches the post to the top.
• Keep two to four bullets on each item. An item with one bullet looks unfinished.
• Put the skills the post asks for that you really have at the front of your skills line.
• Drop items that say nothing to this job, such as a design project on a backend application, if you need the room.
• Use the post’s role as your title line only at your real level: “Backend Developer”, not “Senior Backend Developer”, if you’re a fresher.

If the post says “sales reporting” and you made weekly sales reports, say “sales reporting”. A reader scanning for their own words finds them, and so does any search the company runs on applications. Here is one internship bullet, written three ways for a post that asks for SQL, Power BI and reports for a sales team:

As first written

“Worked on SQL queries and reporting during my internship.”

Tailored, still true

“Wrote the SQL behind a weekly sales report for the regional sales lead, and moved it from Excel to a shared Power BI page.” Every word of it happened; it now names what the post asks for.

Over the line

“Built Power BI dashboards for sales stakeholders across India.” If there was one report for one region, this is no longer true, and the first interview question will show it.

Numbers help only when you measured them. “Cut the report from a day to an hour” is good if it is true; an invented percentage is not. More on why: what happens when a resume has fake experience.

For students, freshers and people with a few years of work, one page. To get there:

• Cut what this job doesn’t need first: an objective statement, unrelated certificates, hobbies, long coursework lists.
• Keep school marks only if you have no degree yet or the post asks for them.
• Shorten bullets to one or two lines each: what you did, with what, and what came of it.
• Don’t shrink the type until it is hard to read. Cut a line instead.
• Save it as a PDF and open it to check it really is one page, with nothing spilling onto a second.

Someone with a long record of relevant senior work can use two pages. Even then, the first page should carry everything this job needs.

• Put your GitHub profile address in the header with your email and phone, written out so it reads on paper: github.com/yourname.
• Link each project to its own repository, next to the project’s name. A reader opens one project, rarely a whole profile.
• Make those repositories public, and give each a short README: what it does, how to run it, a screenshot or a live link.
• Pin your best repositories on your profile so they are the first thing someone sees.
• Designers and writers: a portfolio link with the two or three pieces closest to the job, not everything you have made.
• Use your LinkedIn profile’s short custom address, not the long one with numbers.
• Open every link in the final PDF before you send it.

A brag document is a running list of what you did and what came of it, kept as you go. When you tailor a resume, you choose from it instead of trying to remember what you did eight months ago. Write in it every week, or whenever something is finished. For each entry:

• The date, and the project or job.
• What you did, in a sentence, with the tools you used.
• What came of it: who used it, what changed, a number only if you measured it.
• The proof: a link to the code, the live page, the report, a message of thanks.
• The skills it shows, in the words job posts use.

It works for students too: course projects, hackathons, a college fest’s website, a club’s accounts. With it, tailoring a resume to a post takes a few choices, not an evening.

• Pasting the job description into your resume, or hiding keywords in white text. People read resumes, and hidden text shows the moment the file is read as text.
• Adding a skill because the post asks for it. Put it in your plan to learn, not on the page.
• Changing a past job title to match the post.
• A new design for every job. Keep one clean layout and change what is in it.
• Text inside images, such as a skills graphic. Text in an image can’t be searched or copied.

Once the resume is ready, the email carries it: see how to cold email for a job and the cold email guides by role.

• At sign-up it reads your CV, your project notes, your GitHub repositories (and up to six READMEs) and your portfolio page. It never fetches LinkedIn.
• It holds every line to those documents in code. A line it can’t trace is left out and marked Not used on Profile, where you can choose Use it.
• It asks a few questions before writing: which projects to feature, what you built and what came of it. Your answers become resume lines; nothing you didn’t say is added.
• It makes one base resume for each kind of role you target, up to four.
• For each job you prepare, it chooses and orders your own items and bullets, keeps at least two bullets on each item, moves the skills the post asks for to the front without adding any, and builds the title line from the post’s role without a seniority your record lacks.
• One page by default: if it spills, the type steps down once, then the least important lines come off, and the page count is checked by rendering the file. Or choose As long as it needs, up to three pages.
• Each resume shows a Keyword match: how much of the post’s wording it uses. It is advice; Jobreach never adds a word your record doesn’t back.
• Prefer your own CV? Choose My own CV with Adjust my CV for each job, and it reorders your own lines; nothing is added.