Seven small changes that fit your CV to the job

The average UK graduate role now draws 141 applications, so whoever reads your CV is short of time before they begin. An eye-tracking study put a recruiter's first look at about seven seconds. Often the first reader is a filter instead: three in four recruiters in a 2025 survey said they begin by filtering applicants on skills. (How that works is in what an ATS really does with your CV.)

A tailored CV is built for both readers. It has the words the filter is looking for, in the places a person in a hurry will look. None of it means writing a new CV: it is all order, wording and emphasis. (If you haven't written the first one yet, start with how to write a graduate CV when you have no experience.)

To make it concrete, here is a made-up listing to follow through:

1Put the job's title on your CV

The title is the first thing either reader looks for. In the analysis of 2.5 million applications behind that survey, CVs that carried the listing's job title were interviewed at 10.6 times the rate of those that didn't, and 55% of the recruiters surveyed filter by title. That is a correlation, in data from a company that sells CV tools, so treat the exact multiple loosely. The direction is the point.

As a graduate you rarely hold the title already, so work it in:

• Say it in the first line of your summary: “Computer Science graduate looking for a first role as a Graduate Software Engineer.”
• Title a project by the part you played in it: “Backend engineer, final-year group project”.
• Use their word for the work. If they say engineer, don't say developer or programmer.

2Reorder your skills so their requirements come first

These are the same skills in a different order. A skills line is read from the left and abandoned early, so the first three or four entries do most of the work. Put the listing's requirements first, in the order the listing gives them, and everything else after. A reader who meets their own list at the front of yours sees someone whose strongest skills are the ones this job needs.

Nothing in the second line is new. C++ and Linux, which this job never mentions, have gone, and two entries have been reworded, which is change 4.

Two things help. Keep to skills you'd be comfortable being asked about in an interview. And if the line is getting long, cut, as here: a skill the listing doesn't ask for is taking room from one it does.

3Rewrite the summary for this job

The two or three lines under your name are the one part of a CV you can write fresh every time, and they have two jobs.

The first is to compress the keywords: the title, the two or three requirements you meet best, and one piece of proof. The second is to show that you'd fit the way they work. Culture is shown with evidence, not adjectives. Find what the company says about itself, in the listing or on its careers page, pick the one thing you can back up, and say what you did.

The second version carries the title, four of their requirements and their “own what they ship”, and every clause is specific enough to talk about in an interview. If you don't have the number yet, leave yourself a note in the draft, such as [how many users?], and fill it in before you send.

4Use their exact words

Filters and searches match words. So does a person reading with the listing open beside your CV. Where your CV and the listing mean the same thing, say it their way: “PostgreSQL” if you wrote “Postgres”, “automated testing” in front of your “Jest”. Write an acronym out once with its short form, “Amazon Web Services (AWS)”, so that either search finds you.

That is why “SQL” became “PostgreSQL” in the skills line above: PostgreSQL is the database the candidate used, and it is the word the listing uses.

5Lead every section with the most relevant line

Under each job and project, the first bullet gets read and the fourth often doesn't. Move the bullet closest to what this job does all day to the top of its entry. For Acme, “Wrote 140 Jest tests covering search and sign-up” goes above “Designed the logo”.

Then look at the sections. Keep jobs in date order, but if your projects are a closer match than your part-time work, the Projects section belongs above Experience. And cut. A line this job has no use for costs the reader a second they would have spent on one it does.

6Put the deal-breakers in plain sight

Some things get checked before anything else: your degree and its class, when you graduate, where you are, and whether you have the right to work in the UK. They are the screening questions on the form, and a recruiter scanning the page is looking for the same answers. In the same survey, 60% of recruiters filter on education and 43% on location.

Don't make anyone hunt. Put degree, class and year on one line near the top. Give a town, or “London, open to relocating”. If it's in your favour, add a plain “Right to work in the UK”. And if the listing asks for a 2:1 and you have one, the page should say 2:1.

7Write a cover letter that does what the CV can't

Where a listing takes a letter, send one. In the same analysis of applications, those with a cover letter were interviewed at 3.4 times the rate of those without, with the same caveat as before. In a survey of 625 US hiring managers, 83% said they usually read them and 45% read the letter before the CV. More than a third give it under thirty seconds, so keep it short. The usual UK careers advice is no more than one side of A4; in practice 250 to 300 words is plenty.

What goes in it:

• An opening that names the role and your strongest claim to it. One or two sentences, with the job title and the company, addressed to a named person if you can find one.
• One story as evidence. Take their top requirement and tell the one project or job that proves it: what the problem was, what you did, what happened. The CV lists; the letter explains.
• Why them. Something you couldn't say to any other employer: a product of theirs you've used, a post on their engineering blog, the way they describe their teams. This is where the cultural fit goes, under the same rule as the summary: evidence, not adjectives.
• A plain close. When you can start, that you'd welcome an interview, and thanks.

Leave out your life story, what the job would do for you, apologies for what you lack, and anything already said on the CV.

The twenty-minute version

For each application, in this order:

1. Mark up the listing: the title, the requirements, and one line about how they work.
2. Rewrite the summary around those three things.
3. Reorder the skills line and swap in their words.
4. Move the most relevant bullet to the top of each entry.
5. Check that the deal-breakers can be found in five seconds.
6. Write the letter last, when you know which story the CV left out.

That is slower than sending one PDF everywhere, and it is meant to be. With 141 applicants for the role, the CV that opens with the employer's own title and requirements is the one most likely to be read.