How to match your CV to live UK jobs

What does matching your CV to a job mean?

A match compares what an advert asks for with what your CV shows: the skills it names, the job title, the field it sits in. Done by hand, that is twenty minutes an advert. Done by software, it is the same rule applied to every advert at once, so a score on one job means the same thing on another.

Fitread scores your CV against 30,552 live UK adverts (30,552 straight from employers' own hiring systems), read 24 October 2026. Nothing is guessed: each advert's skills are extracted once, with the same vocabulary used to read your CV.

The result is a list of adverts you already cover best, each with a score you can open and check. Job Match is that list.

How is a match score worked out?

The score is out of 100 and has three parts. Up to 70 points for the share of the advert's skills your CV shows, weighted by how the advert itself weights them: a skill in the job title counts double, a skill the advert only calls desirable counts half. 15 points when your CV shows a skill from the advert's title, or your headline names the same role. 15 points when your field is the advert's (8 when it is close); when neither side names a field Fitread recognises, that part is left out and the rest is scaled to 100.

Four bands: strong from 70, good from 50, partial from 30, and none below that. Three holds keep a thin match honest: an essential skill your CV does not show, or fewer than 3 skills Fitread recognises in the advert, holds the score at 49 at most; fewer than 2 of the advert's skills in your CV holds it at 29 at most.

Every one of those numbers is read from Fitread's own code, and the reading shows the inputs: which skills matched, which did not, where the title points came from. The full working is on how Fitread reads your CV.

How should you read a match score?

A match score is a share of the advert your CV shows. It is not the chance of an interview and not a prediction of what a recruiter will do; a person decides that. There is no pass mark, because none of the agency systems Fitread has read documents one.

Read the bands, not the decimals. A strong match means your CV already names most of what the advert asks for. A partial match with a hold on it means the advert is thin, or one essential skill is missing: the reading says which, so you know whether the gap is a word or a career.

AI never touches the score. Fitread's AI writes the review around the figures, labelled as AI, after the score is fixed. A sentence that names a skill, number, date or employer your CV does not contain is removed before you see it.

How do you raise a match score?

First, the skills. Where the advert says Kubernetes and your CV says K8s, Fitread's vocabulary treats them as one skill, but a recruiter's keyword search may not: write the term the advert uses. Where the advert names a skill you genuinely have and your CV does not mention it, add it. That is the whole of the 70 skill points.

The gap is usually small. A live UK advert that names any skill Fitread recognises names 5.6 of them on average (read 24 October 2026), and the first few are the same across a role.

Take the biggest role in the live data, Social Worker: Social Work England registration is named in 93% of its 1,222 live adverts. A CV for that role that does not say Social Work England registration is leaving points on every advert.

Second, the title. If the first line after your name names the role the advert names, you take the 15 title points. Third, the sector, which you cannot change and should not fake. What you must never do is add a skill you do not have: Tailor my CV suggests changes from your own CV and strikes any claim it cannot find there.

Which jobs should you match your CV against?

Against the adverts you already cover. Matching against a role you have never done produces a low score and no information. Job Match ranks the live adverts by your CV, real matches first, so you spend your time on the ones that will answer.

The adverts carry more than skills: 5% of live adverts state a day rate or salary, and 43% state whether the work is remote, hybrid or on site (read 24 October 2026). Filter on those before you read, and you are left with jobs you would actually take.

One reading of your CV against one advert is free and needs no account; the file is read and discarded in the same request. See what Pro adds when you want the full list and every finding.