How do I tailor my CV to a job description?

List the essential and desirable criteria from the advert and person specification, then match each one to something you have genuinely done. Rewrite your personal statement for the role, move your most relevant experience to the top, and describe it using the employer’s own terms. Leave out anything you cannot back up with real experience.

Should I tailor my CV for every job?

Yes, for every job you really want. You do not need to rewrite it from scratch: keep one strong base CV and, for each application, update the personal statement, reorder your bullet points and adjust your skills so the essential criteria are easy to spot.

How long should a CV be in the UK?

Prospects recommends no more than two A4 pages, and Irish and New Zealand careers guidance also suggests two pages. A third page is only worth it for high-level roles or people with a lot of experience, while a student CV for part-time work can be shorter.

Should I put a photo or my date of birth on a UK CV?

No. The National Careers Service advises leaving out your age, date of birth, marital status and nationality, and Prospects says you only need a photo for acting or modelling jobs. Careers guidance in Ireland and New Zealand is broadly the same. Your contact details, skills and experience are what the employer needs.

How many keywords from the job description should I put on my CV?

There is no set number. Aim to include every essential criterion you can honestly claim, written in the advert’s own words and shown in context in your personal statement, bullet points or skills section. Never add a keyword for something you have not done.

How to Tailor Your CV to a Job Description: A UK Guide

To tailor your CV to a job description, read the advert and the person specification, list the essential and desirable criteria, and match each one to something you have genuinely done. Then rewrite your personal statement for that role, move your strongest evidence to the top, and use the employer’s own words for skills you really have, all within two pages. You don’t need a new CV for every application, just one strong base version that you edit for each job.

A note on terms: in the UK, Ireland and New Zealand this document is called a CV, while in the US and Canada it is usually a résumé. For North American roles, see our guide to tailoring a resume to a job description.

Why tailoring your CV is worth the effort

A generic CV makes the recruiter do the matching; a tailored one does it for them. The UK government’s JobHelp service warns that if you don’t adapt your CV to the role, you are much less likely to reach the next stage. There may be a second reader, too. High-volume recruiters often use an applicant tracking system (ATS), which Prospects describes as screening CVs for keywords from the job description and sorting them for shortlisting. That is why it advises reading the job description and person specification closely and using their relevant keywords in your CV.

UK job adverts often come in three parts, and each tells you something different:

The advert sells the role and gives the salary, location and closing date.
The job description lists the duties you would actually do.
The person specification describes the person they want, usually split into essential and desirable criteria.

Read all three twice: once to decide whether the job is right for you, and once slowly with a highlighter. Save a copy, as adverts often disappear after the closing date and you will want the wording for interview preparation.

Step 2: Turn the person specification into a checklist

The person specification is the closest thing you will get to the employer’s marking scheme. Essential criteria are what they need; desirable criteria could set you apart. Some employers are strict about the difference. Bristol City Council’s application guidance for its children’s care roles, for example, says it won’t shortlist you unless you meet all of the essential criteria, and asks you to show with examples how you meet each one.

Copy the criteria into a simple checklist before you touch your CV:

Role: [job title] at [organisation]. Closing date: [date]
Essential: E1 [criterion] / E2 [criterion] / E3 [criterion] / E4 [criterion]
Desirable: D1 [criterion] / D2 [criterion]
Words the advert repeats: [word], [word], [word]
Exact names for software, qualifications and methods: [name], [name], [name]

If there is no person specification, build the checklist from the duties and any “about you” section. If there is no job description at all, the National Careers Service suggests checking its job profiles to see which skills that kind of role needs.

Step 3: Match each criterion to real evidence

For each line on your checklist, find the proof: a job, a project, a volunteering role, a course or a result. Each criterion lands in one of three places.

Your evidence	What it looks like	What to do on your CV
Strong	You have done this recently and can give an example	Put it in your personal statement and first bullet points
Partial or transferable	You have done it at a smaller scale, in another sector, as a volunteer or while studying	Describe exactly what you did, in the employer’s terms where they fit
Gap	You have not done it	Leave it off. If it is essential, address it in your cover letter or reconsider the role

Transferable skills count: JobHelp names teamwork, communication, adaptability and time management as skills most employers value. But if you could not talk about something for two minutes in an interview, it stays off.

Step 4: Rewrite your personal statement for this job

Your personal statement (or personal profile) sits under your contact details and is the first thing a recruiter reads. The National Careers Service describes it as a few short lines about who you are and what you want to do, and Prospects recommends keeping it to 150 words or fewer, in either the first or third person but never switching between the two.

This is the part of your CV that changes most between applications. Name the kind of role you want, lead with your two strongest essential criteria, and give one piece of proof:

[Current role or field] with [number] years’ experience in [essential criterion 1] and [essential criterion 2]. [One sentence of proof: a responsibility, scale or result that matches the job’s main duty.] [One sentence on what you want next, naming the type of role or sector you are applying to.]

Cut phrases any candidate could write, such as “hard-working team player” or “looking for a new challenge”. They take up space the essential criteria need.

Step 5: Use CV keywords from the job description, in context

CV keywords are the words a recruiter would search or scan for: the job title, skills, software, qualifications and sector terms. Most sit in the essential criteria and the duties, and the words an advert repeats usually matter most.

Use the advert’s term for what you already do. If you “ran partner meetings” and the advert asks for “stakeholder engagement”, and that is genuinely what the work was, use their phrase.
Match the advert’s spelling. If it says “programme” or “organisation”, write the same, and set your word processor to English (UK) so the spellchecker leaves them alone.
Spell out acronyms once, such as “customer relationship management (CRM)”, so either form can be found.
Put keywords in your bullet points, not only in a skills list, so each one sits next to evidence.
Never paste the advert or hide text. Copied sentences say nothing about you, and white or tiny text can surface when a system converts your file to plain text.

If a tool scores your CV against a job, treat the result as a list of gaps to review, not a pass mark (see what counts as a good ATS score).

Step 6: Reorder, trim and keep it to two pages

Keep your jobs in reverse-chronological order, most recent first, as the National Careers Service advises. Within each role, move the bullet points that prove the essential criteria to the top and cut the ones that do nothing for this application. If your most relevant experience is not your most recent, jobs.ac.uk suggests separate “Relevant experience” and “Other experience” headings so it appears on page one.

Prospects recommends no more than two A4 pages, with a third only for high-level roles or long careers. Older, less relevant roles can shrink to one line with the employer, title and dates.

Step 7: Check against your checklist, then proofread

Tick off every essential criterion that now appears on your CV next to evidence. Anything unticked is either something you forgot to include or a real gap. Then check the details:

The organisation’s name and the job title are spelled correctly everywhere
Headings are standard: Personal statement, Work experience, Education, Skills
The file type is what the employer asked for, and the file name includes your name
You have saved a copy of the exact version you sent

Worked example: tailoring a CV for a UK charity role

Tom is a fictional events officer who has spent four years at a local council and wants to move into the charity sector. Here is a shortened, also fictional, advert:

Programme Coordinator, Youth Employment. Essential: E1 experience coordinating a programme or project with several partner organisations; E2 ability to monitor a budget and report on spend; E3 strong written communication, including reports for funders; E4 confident with Microsoft Excel and a CRM or case management system; E5 understanding of safeguarding. Desirable: D1 experience in the voluntary sector; D2 PRINCE2 Foundation or a similar project management qualification.

Part of Tom’s generic CV, the version he sends everywhere:

Personal statement: Hard-working and enthusiastic events professional with excellent communication skills, looking for a new challenge where I can develop further.
Events Officer, local council, 2022 to present
Responsible for organising events
Liaising with various stakeholders
Managing budgets
Dealing with enquiries from the public

None of it is untrue, but a recruiter cannot tick a single criterion from it. Tom maps the person specification to what he has really done:

Criterion	Tom’s real evidence	His change
E1 Programme with partners	Runs 25 community events a year with 12 partner organisations	Lead with it and call it a programme
E2 Budget monitoring	Manages a £40,000 events budget; reports spend to finance monthly	Give the figure; say “monitor” and “report”
E3 Reports for funders	Writes a quarterly report for funding partners on attendance, outcomes and spend	Give it its own bullet point
E4 Excel and a CRM	Tracks bookings in Excel; logs resident enquiries in the council’s CRM	Name both tools
E5 Safeguarding	Completed safeguarding training; follows procedures at youth events	Add a bullet point
D1 Voluntary sector	Volunteers monthly at a food bank	Add a short Volunteering section
D2 PRINCE2	None	Leave it out

The tailored version:

Personal statement: Events officer with four years’ experience in local government, coordinating a year-round community programme with schools, youth services and local charities. I monitor a £40,000 annual budget, report spend monthly and write quarterly reports for funding partners. I now want to bring these skills to a youth employment programme in the charity sector.
Events Officer, local council, 2022 to present
Coordinate a programme of 25 community events a year with 12 partner organisations, including schools, youth services and local charities
Monitor a £40,000 annual events budget and report spend to the finance team each month
Write quarterly progress reports for funding partners covering attendance, outcomes and spend
Follow the council’s safeguarding procedures at all youth events; completed safeguarding training
Track bookings in Microsoft Excel and log resident enquiries in the council’s CRM

Every line is something Tom already did, and every number is his own. All five essential criteria are now visible on page one, the personal statement names the sector he is moving into, and the qualification he lacks is simply absent.

UK, Ireland and New Zealand CV conventions

Tailoring changes what you emphasise, not the basic format. These stay the same for every application:

Detail	UK	Ireland	New Zealand
Photo	Leave it off unless the role is acting or modelling	Not common practice	Government guidance says not to use images
Date of birth and age	Leave them off	Not needed	Age is a prohibited ground of discrimination in hiring
Marital status and nationality	Leave them off	Leave off marital status	Marital status and national origins are also prohibited grounds
Length	Two A4 pages; three only for high-level roles or long careers	Two pages	Two pages if you can

Sources: the National Careers Service and Prospects for the UK; jobs.ie for Ireland, which adds that nationality is only worth including if you are applying from outside the EU; and Tahatū Career Navigator and Employment New Zealand, which explains that New Zealand’s Human Rights Act 1993 covers job adverts, application forms and interviews. In the UK, age, marriage and civil partnership, and race (including nationality) are protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010. Leaving them off keeps the reader focused on your skills.

If an employer asks for an application form with a supporting statement instead of a CV, tailor it the same way: one criterion at a time, each with a real example.

How Leepo helps you tailor your CV for each job

Doing this by hand takes time when you apply for several roles a week. Paste any job link into Leepo, from LinkedIn, a company careers page and more, and it imports the role, the company and, when the advert lists it, the salary. The ATS fit score compares your CV with that one job and shows the matched and missing keywords, a quick cross-check against your own checklist in Step 7.

AI tailoring then drafts a tailored CV for that application from your own experience, and you accept only the suggestions you want. Projects and achievements saved in the Career Vault (with GitHub and LinkedIn import) give it your real work to draw on. The free plan includes unlimited applications and CVs and 3 credits a month; sign up at leepo.ai.

Quick checklist before you apply

I have saved the advert and turned the person specification into a checklist
Every essential criterion I genuinely meet appears on my CV, next to evidence
My personal statement names this type of role and leads with my strongest match
My most relevant experience is on page one, and the CV fits on two pages
There is no photo, date of birth, marital status or nationality on it