Tailoring has a bad name because people confuse it with padding. Padding is adding “stakeholder management” to your skills because the posting says it. Tailoring is noticing that you already manage stakeholders every week, and that your CV never says so.
Read the posting like a screener
Every posting has two layers: what the role is, and what the screen will check for. The screen — a recruiter with a list, or software with a list — is looking for the words. If the posting says “net revenue retention” and your CV says “renewal rate”, you did the thing and will still be filtered out for not naming it.
So the first pass is mechanical. Pull out every requirement and every named tool or metric. Then, for each one, ask: where on my CV is this? Not “do I have it” — where is it written.[1]
Three kinds of gap
Uncovered requirements. The posting asks for it; your CV does not mention it. Sometimes because you have never done it — in which case the honest tailoring is to show the closest thing you have done, plainly. More often because you have done it and never thought it worth a line.
Missing keywords. You have the experience under another name. This is the cheapest fix there is: use their word. “Held churn to 6%” instead of “renewed 94%”. Same fact, now findable.
Weak evidence. The word is there but nothing backs it. “Worked with the product team to feed back client requests” is a claim. “Logged 40 client requests a quarter, six of which shipped” is evidence.
What to change, and what to leave
Tailor the summary and the headline every time; they are the first thing read and the cheapest to change. Tailor the bullets in your most recent one or two roles, where the posting’s requirements should be visible. Leave older roles alone unless one of them is the only place you have a required skill — then promote that bullet, don’t rewrite the role.
Do not tailor the facts. A date, a title, a number is what it is.
Padded
Customer success professional experienced in onboarding, NRR, churn reduction, health scoring and adoption playbooks.
Tailored
Held churn to 6% by value across a 42-account book in 2025 (team average 13%), lifting net revenue retention to 104%.
The first sentence is a list of the posting’s words. The second is one thing Priya actually did, in the posting’s terms. A screen finds both; a human believes one.
Why one master and many copies
Tailoring one document by hand for every application is how people end up with a CV that no longer describes them. Keep one master CV that is complete and true. Make a copy for each job, tailor the copy, and send that. The editor is built around exactly this: the master stays the master, and each tailored version knows which posting it was made for.
Before you paste
Use the real posting, in full. The requirements list is where the report reads the hardest; a summary of the job in your own words gives it nothing to compare against.