It never changes
- Your employers and dates — or a past job title, unless you change it yourself in Transform
- Your education and contact details
- Your numbers — a rewritten bullet that loses one is put back
How to tailor your résumé to a job description
Tailoring means making the résumé you already have speak the language of one particular posting, so the applicant tracking system and the recruiter reading it both find what they are looking for. Here is what that involves — by hand, and with ResumeGroomer — and where the honest line sits.
The idea
What tailoring a résumé actually means
It is not writing a new résumé. Your jobs, your titles, your dates and your results stay what they are. Tailoring changes the words around them, so a reader can see straight away that the experience the posting asks for is experience you already have. In practice that comes down to four things:
- Using the posting’s own terms for work you have done.
- Putting the most relevant work first in each job.
- Making the summary at the top about this job, not every job.
- Listing the skills the posting names that you genuinely have.
Why it matters
Applicant tracking systems search for the posting’s words
Many employers run applications through an applicant tracking system (ATS) before a person reads them, and recruiters search those systems for the skills and job terms in the posting. Two phrases can describe the same work — “built data pipelines” and “ETL”, say — and a search for one can miss a résumé that only uses the other.
That is the whole case for tailoring. Not tricking the system: making sure the words that describe your experience are the words the employer is going to search for. No tool can promise a résumé gets past a particular employer’s filters, and this page will not either.
The method
Tailoring a résumé by hand, step by step
Each step below is what to do yourself — and, underneath it, the part ResumeGroomer does for you.
Pull the requirements out of the posting
List the skills, tools, certifications and phrases it asks for. The ones it repeats, or puts first, usually matter most.
With ResumeGroomer: It reads the posting and lists the keywords it asks for. You untick any you don’t want used, and those never go in.
Find where your résumé already covers them
Mark the bullets that show each requirement. Anything the posting asks for that you genuinely have but never wrote down goes on a list too.
With ResumeGroomer: It finds the lines in your résumé that already cover each keyword.
Reword those lines in the posting’s language
Change the words, not the facts. If the posting says “stakeholder reporting” and you wrote “sent updates to managers”, say it the posting’s way. Keep every number exactly as it was.
With ResumeGroomer: It rewrites those lines in the posting’s words, and a rewritten line that loses one of your numbers gets it put back.
Point the summary and the skills at this job
Make the summary at the top about this role rather than every role, and list the skills the posting names that you really have.
With ResumeGroomer: It works the keywords into your summary — writing a short one if you have none — and adds the posting’s technical skills you don’t list yet to your Skills section.
Lead with the most relevant work
Within each job, put the bullets this posting cares about first, so a quick skim lands on them.
With ResumeGroomer: It orders the bullets in each job by relevance and drops near-duplicates.
Check the layout survived, and keep a copy
Hand-editing a carefully formatted Word file is where spacing and alignment break. Save a version per application so you know what each employer saw.
With ResumeGroomer: It writes the result into a copy of your own DOCX — same fonts, same spacing — and never edits the file you uploaded.
Formatting
Keep your own layout
Résumé builders move your content into a template of their own. ResumeGroomer works the other way round: you upload your résumé as a Word (.docx) file, it edits the text inside a copy of it, and the tailored version comes back in your layout — your fonts, your spacing, your section order. A PDF is available too.
If you would rather have a fresh look, you can switch the result to one of six clean designs. Nothing forces it.
The honest line
What it will change, and what it never touches
Tailoring stops being tailoring when it starts claiming work you did not do. This is exactly what ResumeGroomer touches — you see every change beside the line you wrote before you download anything.
It does add — so read it
- Adds the posting’s technical skills you don’t list yet to your Skills section
- In Aggressive and Transform, keywords you leave selected go in even where your experience doesn’t mention them
- Untick any keyword you could not talk about in an interview, and it never goes in
More than one application
Tailoring one résumé to several jobs
Every posting deserves its own version. Start a batch with one résumé and several postings, and each is groomed separately against its own job, then opens and downloads on its own. A batch takes one credit per posting.
Try it
Bring your next posting
5 grooms are free when you sign up — no card. After that, one credit a groom.
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