Is tailoring my CV to keywords dishonest?

No — as long as you only mirror language for experience you genuinely have. Honest tailoring means describing your real work in the employer's own words. Claiming skills you don't have to match keywords is dishonest and tends to unravel at interview.

Should I use a PDF or Word document?

Follow what the employer asks for. If unspecified, a clean, simply-formatted PDF is usually safe for modern applicant tracking systems. Avoid multi-column designs, text-in-images, and content in headers or footers, which can break parsing.

How much of my CV should I change per job?

You don't rewrite everything. Focus on the professional summary, the order of your bullets, and the key terms — enough that the most relevant experience and the role's must-have language are obvious in the first few seconds.

How to tailor your CV to a job description (and get past the ATS)

Most large employers screen CVs with an applicant tracking system (ATS) before a person ever sees them. A tailored CV — one that mirrors the specific job's language and leads with the most relevant evidence — clears that filter and reads better to the human on the other side. Here's how to do it well, without gaming it.

What an ATS actually does

An ATS parses your CV into structured data and helps a recruiter search and rank applicants — often by how well your CV matches the job's key terms. It's not usually a hard auto-reject robot, but a CV that doesn't reflect the role's language ranks lower and gets seen less. The fix is honest alignment, not tricks.

Pull the keywords from the job description

The job description is your keyword list. Read it and extract the terms that matter, then make sure the real ones appear naturally in your CV where they're true of you.

Hard skills and tools named explicitly (e.g. specific software, methods, certifications).
The exact job-title language the employer uses, if it genuinely matches your experience.
Repeated themes — words that appear two or three times signal what they care about most.
Required vs. desirable — prioritise matching the 'must-haves' first.

Mirror the language honestly

If you have the experience but describe it differently, adopt the employer's wording. 'Client relationship management' becomes 'account management' if that's their term. This is honest alignment — you're describing the same real experience in the words their ATS and recruiter are looking for. Never claim a skill you don't have to hit a keyword.

Lead with the most relevant evidence

Tailoring isn't only keywords — it's emphasis. Reorder your bullets so the achievements most relevant to this role sit first in each job. Rewrite your professional summary to speak directly to this position. The recruiter should see the match in the first few seconds.

Keep the format ATS-safe

Fancy layouts confuse parsers. Give the ATS a clean document it can read reliably.

Use standard section headings: Experience, Education, Skills.
Avoid text inside images, tables, headers/footers, or multi-column layouts that scramble parsing.
Use a common font and simple bullet points; save as the format the employer requests (usually PDF or Word).
Spell out acronyms at least once, with the abbreviation alongside.

Turn duties into quantified achievements

Matching keywords gets you seen; evidence gets you shortlisted. As you tailor, convert vague duties into specific, quantified wins using a formula like Google's X-Y-Z: 'Accomplished X, measured by Y, by doing Z.' That reads as a track record, not a task list.

Tailor in minutes, not hours

Doing this by hand for every application is slow. WorkstationAI's CV Workstation tailors your CV to a specific job description — matching the role's keywords, keeping the format ATS-friendly, and turning duties into evidence-led achievements — with your first tailor free.