Step 1: Read the posting and sort it
Split the posting into three piles: the requirements (what the employer says you must have), the nice-to-haves (usually under a heading such as "preferred" or "an asset"), and the responsibilities (what you would do). Then mark the words and phrases that appear more than once. What a posting repeats is what its writer cares about most.
Step 2: Find your evidence
For each requirement, write down one real example from your own work or studies: where it was, what you did, and a number if you have one. If you can't think of an example, that requirement is a gap, and the next step is about gaps.
Step 3: Be honest about gaps
Postings often describe an ideal candidate, so you don't need every item to apply. If you lack something, leave it out. If you have close experience, say exactly what it was: "built dashboards in Power BI" is honest, and "built dashboards in Tableau" is not, if you have never used Tableau.
Step 4: Use the posting's words where they are true
If you did the work but described it differently, switch to the employer's wording. This example is made up:
- Before: Sent updates to managers every week.
- After: Presented KPIs and stakeholder reporting to the leadership team every Monday.
The second line is only right if it is a fair description of what happened. Check each rewritten line against what you really did.
Step 5: Reorder and trim
- Put the bullets that match the job's requirements first under each role.
- Keep a short summary, two lines at most, that names the role you're applying for.
- List the skills the posting asks for, and that you have, near the top of the Skills section.
- Cut or shorten the bullets that have nothing to do with this job.
Step 6: Check the match, one term at a time
Paste your resume and the posting into the free resume keyword checker. It lists the terms the posting asks for that your resume doesn't show. For each one, ask whether it is true for you. If it is, add it where it belongs, in a real bullet. If it isn't, leave it out.
What not to do
- Don't add skills you don't have.
- Don't paste in a block of keywords with no context, and don't hide keywords in white text. A claim you can't back up tends to come out in the interview, and a hidden list can look like cheating to the person reading it.
- Don't copy whole sentences from the posting. Use its words to describe your own work.
- Don't change your dates, titles or results.
Keep a master resume
Keep one long master resume with everything you have done. For each application, make a copy and change only what the job calls for. Write down which version you sent, so you know what the employer saw. The guide to tracking job applications shows a simple way to do that.