Should you tailor your CV to every job? The numbers

How many skills does a UK advert ask for?

Fewer than you would think. Across 30,552 live UK adverts (read 24 October 2026), an advert that names any skill Fitread recognises names 5.6 of them on average. The rest of the advert is the company, the pay and the paragraph about culture.

It varies by role. The roles asking for the most skills per advert, among the biggest roles in the live data:

What changes a match score?

Three things, and nothing else. Skills: up to 70 points for the share of the advert's skills your CV shows, weighted as the advert weights them. A skill in the advert's title counts double; a skill it only calls desirable counts half. Title: 15 points when your CV shows a skill from the advert's title or your headline names the same role. Sector: 15 points when your field is the advert's.

So the biggest single move is a skill the advert puts in its title: it is double-weighted in the skill points and it earns the title points. The second is your headline naming the role. Everything else, the summary, the hobbies, the order of your jobs, moves the score by nothing. It may matter to the person who reads it next; it does not matter to the match.

What you cannot fix by tailoring: fewer than 3 recognised skills in the advert holds any score at 49 at most, and an essential skill you do not have holds it there too. The reading tells you which hold applies, so you can stop tailoring and move on.

So should you tailor your CV every time?

The point: tailoring is not rewriting. It is making sure the handful of skills this advert names are in your CV, in its words, if you have them.

Tailor the skills and the headline, every time, when they are true. Do not rewrite the rest. Because the same few skills lead most adverts for a role, a CV that already names them is most of the way on every advert; the per-job work is the one or two skills this advert adds.

In the live data, Social Work England registration is named in 93% of 1,222 adverts for Social Worker. A Social Worker CV that says it once is tailored for most of the role's adverts before you open any of them.

Read against one advert first. If the score is strong and no hold applies, send it. If a skill you have is missing, add it in the advert's words. If a skill you do not have is essential, that advert is not yours, and no amount of tailoring makes it so.

How does Tailor my CV help without lying?

Tailor my CV reads your CV and the advert, shows each of the advert's skills as found or missing, and suggests wording for each gap, drawn from what your CV already says. It then checks its own suggestions: a line naming a skill, number, date or employer your CV does not contain is removed before you see it.

That is slower than inventing, and it is the only honest way to do it. A tailored CV that claims a skill you lack may pass the software and fails at interview. Fast, and it never lies on your behalf.

Where do you start?

Start with one advert and Read my CV: free, no account, the file read and discarded in the same request. When you want to know which adverts to tailor for in the first place, Job Match ranks the live ones by your CV. The data behind this page is in the skills UK adverts ask for.