ATS
6 min read

Tailor Your Resume to a Job Description

July 21, 2026

Most people send the same resume to 60 companies and wonder why nothing lands. Tailoring beats volume — but only if it takes minutes, not hours.

Step 1: pull the requirements. Copy the job posting and highlight every noun phrase that names a skill, tool, or responsibility. Those are the terms the ATS and the recruiter both scan for.

Step 2: separate must-haves from nice-to-haves. Anything repeated in both the responsibilities and requirements sections is a must-have. Those belong in your summary and your top two bullets.

Step 3: reorder, don't invent. Move the experience that matches the must-haves to the top of each role. Ordering signals relevance faster than any keyword stuffing.

Step 4: match the vocabulary exactly. If they say 'incident response', don't write 'on-call firefighting'. Parsers do not resolve synonyms reliably.

Step 5: verify. Run the posting through DraftlyCV's JD match to see a score and the exact missing terms, then patch the two or three biggest gaps.

Fifteen minutes per application, and your callback rate typically moves more than any redesign of the resume ever will.

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