Most resume advice says "tailor it to the job." Very little says how. Here is the 15-minute check I use before sending an application. It works with a text editor and two browser tabs, and you don't need an AI tool for it.
1. Split the job description into three piles
Read the ad once and copy each requirement into one of three lists:
- Must-haves. Phrases like "required", "you have", "X+ years of", and anything in the first bullet list under "Requirements". This is what a recruiter screens on in the first 30 seconds.
- Nice-to-haves. "Bonus", "a plus", "familiarity with", "ideally". These break ties, but they rarely get you filtered out.
- Context. Team size, product, stage, what the first 90 days look like. None of this goes on your resume. It's for your summary line and the interview.
Most people tailor against the whole ad. Tailoring against the must-have list alone is faster, and it's where the filtering happens.
2. Use their words, not your synonyms
For each must-have, search your resume for the exact term the ad uses.
- The ad says "stakeholder management" and you wrote "worked with product and sales"? A human might connect those. A keyword filter or a skimming recruiter often won't.
- The ad says "PostgreSQL" and you wrote "SQL databases"? Name it.
- The ad says "B2B SaaS" and your resume only names the company? Add three words that say what the company was.
This isn't keyword stuffing. If you did the thing, call it what the reader calls it.
3. Mark every must-have as covered, weak, or missing
Go down the must-have list and mark each one:
- Covered. It appears with evidence: a number, a project, or a result.
- Weak. It's implied, buried in a skills list, or has no evidence.
- Missing. It's not there at all.
The weak ones are where tailoring pays off. Moving "Kubernetes" from the skills list into a bullet like "moved 14 services to Kubernetes, cut deploy time from 40 to 8 minutes" turns a keyword into proof.
For the missing ones, be honest with yourself. One or two missing must-haves is normal, and plenty of people get hired that way. Five missing means this role probably isn't the best use of an application.
4. Check the top third of page one
Recruiters decide from the top third of the first page. After tailoring, check that:
- Your title or summary line uses the role's own title, or something close to it.
- At least two must-haves appear in that top third with evidence.
- The most recent job's first bullet is the most relevant thing you did there. It shouldn't just be the first thing you did.
5. Things that quietly hurt
- Years-of-experience mismatch. If they ask for 5+ and your dates show 3, a recruiter will spot it. Address it with scope, like "led a team of 4" or "owned billing end to end", rather than hoping they miss it.
- Tool lists without dates. "React, Angular, jQuery, Backbone" reads differently when the only recent one is jQuery.
- The same resume for different role types. A backend role and a platform role can share 80% of the content, but the top third should differ.
A quick worked example
Ad must-haves: TypeScript, React, REST API design, 3+ years, mentoring.
Resume before: TypeScript and React appear in the skills list. There's an "API" bullet with no detail. Mentoring isn't mentioned. The dates show 4 years.
- TypeScript and React: weak. They're only in the skills list. Add them to a bullet with a result.
- REST API design: weak. Name the API, how many endpoints or consumers it had, and one design decision.
- 3+ years: covered.
- Mentoring: missing, but the candidate onboarded two juniors. That's mentoring, so say it.
That's four changes. None of them invents anything, and the resume now answers every must-have in the ad's own words.
If you want to try the comparison step on your own resume, we put a free, rule-based JD vs resume demo online. It runs in your browser and doesn't use AI. It shows which requirements in the ad already have evidence in your resume and which don't, and nothing you paste leaves the tab.
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