Should I Customise My CV? Jobseeker Basics XVII

Greg Wyatt • February 16, 2026

In tomorrow's LinkedIn Live, Simon Ward and I will debate the merits of customising applications.

Simon is mainly on the side of customisation, whereas I feel it's often relied on as a crutch that detracts from more effective action.

I'm not against it by any means, yet it falls much lower on my priority list than you might think.

You can join us tomorrow at 1pm GMT, by clicking on this link:

https://www.linkedin.com/events/shouldajobhuntertailortheircvfo7427656161476415488/theater/

You can generally see my views on customisation in three chapters of A Career Breakdown Kit.

I've shared two of them in this newsletter already:

Hierarchy of Pain, which explains why the real essential requirements of a vacancy aren't always articulated or even defined, in which case customisation can actually work against you.

De Facto Automated Rejection and You, in which I explain why the ATS isn't the real problem, and what you should consider instead. Given customisation and 'ATS Compliance' go hand in hand, this is a must read.

The third chapter is shared below and answers the question more directly.

But if it's all far too TL;DR, then you should only customise your application if you answer yes to these questions:

1/ Is my core CV good enough? Good enough is your minimum acceptable level - not the goal - and I'm sorry to say the vast majority of CVs do not meet this threshold.

2/ Do I know the hierarchy of decision making in the hiring process, and what each stakeholder needs from the application?

3/ Does the advert speak to me personally? If it's a generic document, you can bet your customisation will look precisely the same as every other person taking the good advice to customise their application.

4/ Could the employer or agency have further vacancies, now or in future, that I am better suited to?

5/ Does my customised CV resemble my LinkedIn closely enough that it doesn't appear to lie?

6/ Am I articulating applicable skills, direct qualifications and relevant experience in the language of the vacancy?

7/ Does the time taken to customise outweigh the speed needed to apply?

8/ Am I 100% focused on the jobs that best meet my strengths?

9/ Is this a better use of my time than the harder activity I've been putting off?

10/ When applying through a job board, is this CV optimised to be findable for my ideal role through their CV database?

I'm sure there are more, but these are a good start. The three chapters explain why you should ask these questions first, so you can make sure your strategy works for you.

And these are the basis for my side of the discussion tomorrow.

34 - Should I customise my CV?

It depends.

Am I qualified?

Strip away bad behaviour, laziness and discrimination, and ask any hiring manager what they want from an application.

I’d wager the most common answer will be -

‘Qualified candidates’

Qualified goes beyond capability.

Can we identify any insurmountable nos?

This might be experience, qualifications, assumption of salary level or commutability, availability, or a lack of work permit.

Often it comes down to assumption. Fair or not, it’s their assumption to make.

All we can do is show how we qualify.

Ask these same hiring managers what proportion of applications aren’t qualified enough, and the answer will be anywhere between 75% and 100%.

Many of these will be wing and a prayer or automated applications. White noise that detracts from qualified candidates.

If you truly are a best-fit candidate for a vacancy, how would you feel if unqualified applications took attention away from you?

In a world where job seekers are often told to ‘shoot your shot’, is it possible that you’ve been an unqualified candidate on occasion?

When looking at any advert, ask yourself -

Am I qualified to do this job?

If yes, ‘How will my application demonstrate that I am qualified?’

This informs whether and how you should customise a CV.

Most jobs are learnable, using transferable skills.

If everyone can learn and has similar transferable skills, neither of these is a remarkable quality. They don’t stand out and they don’t inherently qualify you for a vacancy.

I expect that a significant proportion of what are considered to be unqualified candidates could ‘do that job’ with sufficient support.

It’s just that the expectation is other applicants can do the job better or achieve sufficiency sooner.

This may be perceptual and unfair. It is how many people make decisions when recruiting.

Instead, the onus has to be on the applicability of what we offer.

What’s in it for them?

Can you show how each facet of your candidacy applies in the context of the vacancy?

If you can’t, the decision is likely to be against you in a competitive market.

If you strongly believe you are qualified for points you are always rejected for, you have to articulate why.

This may be for as simple a reason as living 70 miles from their office.

They assume it’s too far and say no.

You’ve been commuting 75 miles for 10 years, and you know you are qualified. Say so.

Same with salary. They judge you were probably on £70k and their budget is £60k max - it’s not going to work.

You’ve done the maths. It’s a great job, the salary is fair, and it’s affordable. Say so.

Or those career gaps.

‘This person’s unemployable - no work for three years!’

‘When I was made redundant, I had the opportunity to support my ailing mother. She passed away in March, and I’m ready to work.’ Say so (and I’m sorry for your loss).

When we talk about being qualified, it’s often more about the skills and capability required to do a job.

If you know you can do the job, show how in your application. This should be the core part of your proposition in words a reader will accept to help us make the right decision.

If you can’t achieve this in your application, you may not be seen to be qualified.

‘Core part’ is important, because you may be someone who has an excellent track record, and a small part of your expertise relates to the core of a vacancy.

You may be able to show this in your application.

However, if you are competing against candidates whose main expertise is the core of the vacancy, you may be perceived generally as a weaker candidate.

An exception might be if you can demonstrate specifically how your wider experience solves problems the vacancy will have.

How can you glean that from a generic advert?

If you aren’t getting any return from customising CVs, it’s because you aren’t seen to be a qualified candidate (if your CV is even seen at all).

And if you can’t provide suitable and sufficient evidence that you are a qualified candidate, you should save your time by not applying.

Whenever I talk to job seekers frustrated by spending hours on customising CVs only to be knocked back instantly, I’m equally frustrated to say they probably never had a chance with those applications.

Strip those applications away and focus on the ones you can show qualified candidacy for quickly.

You’ll save a lot of time and frustration and you’ll IMPROVE your odds, by giving you more time to focus on what matters - more suitable vacancies and different job search activities.

You’ll also improve the odds for more qualified candidates.

Customise to beat the ATS!

Okay, if you’re worried about beating the bots - reread the ATS chapters (p29).

Worry more about being human optimised with a ‘good enough’ CV - it will be implicitly ATS compliant because of what an ATS is.

Yes, solutions are changing all the time, yet as ‘AI’ evolves on recruitment platforms, it will emulate how humans parse documentation.

Appropriate human optimisation is still key, our warts and all.

Not keyword bombing and ‘93% ATS compliant’ piffle.

Good enough

The argument that you should customise your CV against every application to maximise your odds seems to make sense.

Yet, it neglects one key principle. That your starting CV is good enough.

In many applications I see, they are not.

I don’t mean that they haven’t been customised, I mean that they aren’t fit for purpose.

And if that’s the case with your CV, customising only covers over the cracks in a weak document.

CVs in general are weak in specificity, context, applicable skills and readability.

Because people in good times often get by on weak documentation. Jobs are aplenty, suitable candidates competed for - you can succeed with less.

In bad times, good enough has to be a minimum, and most fall short.

I had a debate with a career coach recently who challenged me that ‘good enough’ will never get you a job - why would you always want to be sixth place?

Yet if CVs aren’t good enough to start with, there’s little point in chasing perfect - the most subjective of principles.

If you don’t get past the first sift, you won’t even get to sixth place.

Get the objective principles right and build from there.

Besides, everyone has an opinion on what good looks like in CVs. Perfect for one may be rubbish for another. Quite the stinger when you’ve paid for perfection.

Good enough is about reaching an objectively good CV-state for your context, which depends on all those factors unique to you - your skills and candidacy, the state of your market, the volume of competition and vacancies.

Good enough shows you in your best light, highlighting your candidacy for the role you are most suited for.

You can’t be all things to all people - good marketing is about leaning into what makes you, you.

Get your CV right, and it’s the basis for non-application activities:

Your LinkedIn profile (given it should be consistent with your applications)
A document you share in networking (there’s no point customising here)
A CV that may be found on CV databases (read Better Use of Job Boards - p211)
A CV you’ve used for an application you were rejected for, then logged onto an ATS which is visible to the hiring team for more suited vacancies they may not even advertise
The basis of how you describe yourself in personal branding, elevator pitches, doorknocking and any other commercial-type activity that can put you closer to a job

A CV isn’t just an application tool, it’s the anchor of your professional identity.

It isn’t just an outbound document, it can attract inbound interest.

And if you get it good enough, any customisation should be minimal, allowing you to apply for suited vacancies more quickly.

Quality of information

Let’s face it, most job adverts and job descriptions aren’t fit for purpose either.

Your experience of generic, misrepresentative job adverts mirrors how recruiters experience generic, misrepresentative CVs.

Those carefully written adverts that appear to speak to you directly… well those are good enough adverts to spend time on.

For the rest, would it make much difference if you relied solely on the job title, working arrangements and salary? Perhaps industry and product type, too.

‘Here at Bircham Wyatt Recruitment, we are a market-leading progressive innovator of fast-paced all-level communication.’

A lot of words which say nothing at all.

And because everyone uses them, they lose meaning - as with transferable skills.

Strip all the twaddle away, and if those top-level points are adequate, I expect you’ll go straight to Essential Requirements to see if you are qualified.

The problem with generic adverts is that these Essential Requirements may also lack Essential Specificity. What’s misrepresentative?

What’s missing? What are they really looking for?

This is often hidden pain that is key to unlocking a vacancy – something I write about in more depth, in the next chapter.

If you aren’t certain on these points, what are you customising against?

Could it be you accidentally edit out what makes you most suited to a vacancy, if what they leave unsaid is the most important piece?

Sometimes this is down to carelessness by the employer - sometimes it’s deliberate:

I once placed an HR Manager at a ‘rapidly growing’ company. They didn’t tell me or her that the thing they needed most was her mass-redundancy experience, which was what she was tasked to do on day one.

The truth was the opposite of their job description.

And sometimes different stages of the hiring process have different priorities, which may never have been articulated in the advert:

Administrator, Recruiter, Line Manager, Head of Department, Director...

A messed-up perfect storm

If you’ve made it this far, you’ve probably been looking for work for a while, in a competitive marketplace with too many qualified candidates, far too many applications, and too few viable vacancies.

Plus, technology that encourages speed and volume.

And under-resourced, over-worked hiring teams, many of whom don’t do hiring as a day job.

Have you ever spent an hour customising a CV only to learn you were application number 232? Without knowing they’d closed applications at 200. And you received an instant rejection?

Sometimes, it may be a question of speed over quality.

How do you find the right balance?

Reciprocity in action

For advertising, the balance is simple.

Invest as much time in your application as their effort in the advert.

For a transactional generic advert - apply transactionally, diarise a follow-up, move on.

Keep these in a transactional fire-and-forget pile.

For the adverts that speak to you personally or take time and care to accurately articulate what the role is and what it offers you, reciprocate this effort in your application.

Keep these in a non-transactional pile.

Measure your return separately.

You’ll find a higher hit rate in the second, with the virtuous circle of your added investment.

While the lower hit rate of the first is mirrored by not needing to have put so much of yourself into it.

What about AI?

There are many wonderful AI tools available, and if you want to take the time out of customising CVs, automating seems a great opportunity.

What exactly are they customising against?

Because the quality of information you can convey is based on situational insight, it seems to me that AI can only tweak terminology or regurgitate what others have already written.

If everyone uses AI in this way, the output is generic resulting in same-same messages and CVs at scale.

This is what I’m hearing from people who are recruiting - reams of identical looking applications that lack punch.

It doesn’t help; it works against you.

For ideation, research, analysis, it’s an effective tool. Ask it which areas of a job description you might focus on selling your experience against.

For applying at scale, for now, it’s part of the noise.

Should I customise my CV and how?

It depends.

If your CV is already ‘good enough’, it shouldn’t take too much time to show how you meet the essential requirements of an advert.

If an advert sings to you and you feel inspired to put your best foot forward, you should (maybe check it’s still live first).

Use relevant impact based achievements. ‘I did x by y resulting in z’
Show relevant context - if your last employer was a context fit, show how. E.g. Rapidly growing scale-up, 50 to 250 in one year, t/o £24m. Or 500 staff, manufacturing of precision components for aerospace, significant downsizing programme
Align your language to theirs - they say PDCA, you said CI. They say S&OP, you said integrated business planning. Don’t fabricate
Remember - what’s in it for them? How will you solve their problems or help them reach their desired outcomes?

For other situations, I’d question whether the marginal gain of customisation should be set aside for what may be the maximal gain of what you don’t want to do:

Networking, doorknocking, personal branding, and all those other inbound and outbound activities that might get you closer to a job.

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Why five? Innovation from Iteration, pt 1

By Greg Wyatt • February 26, 2026

So here were are, the start of a new series. This series may be around 10 editions, looking at the things other industries do that we can implement into recruitment. These were written 3 years ago, right at the start of the AI zazzle, and in some ways have dated quite a bit. In others, the way in which they haven't dated at all, because the principles of how we live our business lives can be universal. So, I'm not sure yet, how much editing I'll do, whether there will be any inclusions, or whether I'll leave articles intact, as a moment in time. I've learnt all of these notions from candidates and clients, as I came to understand the function of their vacancies. Hearing about the daily practice from people doing jobs, I couldn't help but notice the same relevance in recruitment. So while these articles are hardly comprehensive, perhaps they'll make you look at your candidates differently, in what we can learn from them, and how that might improve our recruitment. Why five? December 2022 Ask anyone involved in active recruitment what their key problems are, and they’ll likely talk about skills shortages and candidate behaviour. On the face of it, problems which are out of our control, worthy of complaint with little opportunity to find improvement. But what if these were issues that weren’t entirely out of our control? What if we could apply a replicable process to understand what’s really going on, and how we can make a difference? Fortunately, we needn’t invent the wheel, as other industries have already done this for us. One such is 5Y, or Five Whys, a problem-solving technique that was developed by Toyota in the 1930s. It's part of the Toyota Management System that has inspired much of my work. Five is the general number of “Why?”s needed to get to the root of a problem. Often you can get to the heart of the issue sooner, sometimes later. Often there are multiple root causes. More than just solving problems, it’s about establishing practical countermeasures to prevent these problems from coming up in future. 5Y is an example of Toyota’s philosophy of “go and see”: working on the shop floor to find out how things work in practice to find ways for iterative improvement. This isn’t a theoretical idea to try out on a whim – it’s based on grounded reality and almost always works. There are two costs – time and accountability. Here’s a practical example, then a recruitment one. (Names have been removed to protect my identity) Problem 1 : The children were late for school. Why? Traffic held us up. Why? We left the house late. Why? The children weren’t ready on time. Why? Their school uniforms weren’t prepared. Why? We hadn’t set them out the night before. Here the countermeasure is to get everything ready the night before, rather than blame traffic for being late. Perhaps we might have gotten to school on time without heavy traffic, but that is an element out of our control. Of course, here there is another root cause – very naughty children – but better to focus on the simple changes. And sometimes traffic is the root cause after all, once you’ve ruled out other elements in your control. (2026 note: my eldest now often drives my youngest to school. A time laden solution I hadn't considered three years ago. Now I don't care if they're late 😆) Problem 2: Candidates keep ghosting us. Why? They weren’t committed to responding. Why? They didn’t accept my requirement for a response. Why? They saw no value in my requirement. Why? I didn’t create an environment where this requirement has value ( root cause 1 ). Or because they are very naughty candidates, with a bad attitude. Why have we allowed someone with a bad attitude in our recruitment process? Because we didn’t prequalify them well enough ( root cause 2 ) The first root cause is something we can work on by giving candidates what they need, building trust, and working to mutual obligations. There are many ways to do this – I’ve already talked about examples in previous newsletters. It comes down to good candidate experience and reciprocity. The second root cause requires us to work harder at understanding candidate needs, aspirations, behaviours and attitudes at the outset of a recruitment process. There’s a reason for their behaviour. We can be accountable for finding it. That’s no mean skill to develop, yet an essential one for anyone whose core responsibility is recruitment. And it’s hard to do in a transactional volume process, so the question then becomes, does your process help more than it hinders? You can apply 5Y to any issue you come across, as long as you are prepared to be accountable. At worst you may find that the things that were out of your control are at fault. In this case, you are at least armed with good information to report to your stakeholders, by ruling out other possibilities. What’s the point of doing all this? For me it’s continually improving how I recruit, with the consequence, in the example above, that I am rarely ghosted at all. And you can 5Y any issue you come across. Are poor agency CV submissions their fault, or in part down to your briefing and process? Are skills genuinely scarce, or is your requirement unrealistic? Is it true that your agency hasn’t listened to you, or do you engage the right partners in the right way? 5Y has the answers. Regards, Greg

Map the Market. Jobseeker Basics XVIII

By Greg Wyatt • February 23, 2026

What follows is Chapter 21 in A Career Breakdown Kit (2026) . It's a good example of how a job search is an inverted recruitment exercise, but also how the same principles from recruitment can be applied in a job search. Market mapping is one of the first steps of a search process in what is often called headhunting. Here though, instead of an exercise that helps find a person for a job, you help find a job for you. This can be in one chunk, at the outset, and iteratively, as you learn more information. It's a great example of how LinkedIn can be used as a data repository, given the vast majority of professionals are present here. And if they are present here, the insight that is their careers is too, allowing you to identify potential viable employers, who works there, and therefore where else they may have worked, with further potential hiring managers. The snake that eats its own tail. Try doing the iterative work above, every time you come across someone new, whether in an application or in networking . You can use this to build out your network, identify companies to contact proactively. Simon Ward and I will talk more on this in our LinkedIn Live on Tuesday February 24th at 1pm GMT. You can join us, and view the full recording afterwards, here: Is The Nature Of Networking Changing for Job Hunters? If you happen to read this as a hiring authority, market mapping is one of the invisible processes in a structured search. It can often take me 80 to 100 hours to fully map a role for potential viable candidates, given I try to find non-traditional candidates as well as those that are easier to find through sourcing. 21 - Map the market Market mapping is a common activity in executive search. Why wouldn’t you adopt the same approach in your inverse of a recruitment exercise? The idea is to fully understand your market, so that you are better able to navigate it. This is a summary chapter because market mapping is both a strategic and a tactical exercise. I’ll cover some of the How of mapping in Part Three. There are three ways in which to map the market. The vacancies you are qualified for This is about determining which vacancies you should focus your attention on. In which domains does your capability directly apply? This could be context related, if your expertise is in start-ups, growth, downsizing or other contexts. It could be industry related - your process manufacturing expertise might directly apply in food, plastics or pharmaceuticals. It could be job related, with the right applicable skills. Establish where there is a market for you, and if what you offer is needed by that market. Advice on the transferable skills trap (p55) and whether you are qualified (p178) to apply will help. The geography of your job search Where are all the employers and vacancies that you can sustainably commute to? A geographical map can help you target opportunities by region. What resources are available to help you with this map? Searching online for local business parks, even driving around them, can give a list of viable companies to contact. Directories and membership hubs. Local newspapers, social media stories. If you see a company you like the look of, say from an advert, search on their local post code. Who else might be there? The chapter on doorknocking (p241) has more ideas. The people of your network Every time you come across someone you might build a relationship with, connect with them on LinkedIn. Then check out their career history. Who else have they worked with? Where else have they worked? This works for peers, hiring managers, and recruiters - a headhunter in one company may well have worked in a similar domain in a previous one. Is there anyone at these previous companies you should introduce yourself to? What about their listed vacancies? Building out a map of relevant recruiters to develop relationships with (if they answer the phone) can lead to vacancies. Treat it as an iterative exercise. Check out the chapter on networking (p236). This map isn’t just about potential opportunity. It’s also about information that might be helpful now and in future. This might be for job leads. It might be industry insight you can share through content. It may even be topics for conversation in interviews or with peers. Make sure you track it in the right way, whether through Notion, Excel or other resources you have available. With any information, check it is accurate, then prune appropriately. Prioritise on degrees of separation (closest first) and context fit (where what you need is most closely aligned with what you offer).