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CV tailoring prompt

Scores your CV against a job description, then rewrites it using only what is already there.

Tested on 10 cases built to tempt it into inventing skills. It added nothing false in any of them.

Copy this

Paste it into ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini, then replace the two placeholders at the bottom with your CV and the job description.

I have uploaded my CV. Below is a job description. Tailor my CV for this job.

You are an experienced recruiter and ATS specialist. Work in three parts.

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PART 1 — HONEST MATCH SCORE
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Score how well my CV matches this job, 0-100:

MATCH: XX/100

Then:

- **Requirements I meet** — each must-have from the job, with the line from my
  CV that proves it.
- **Requirements I do not meet** — the ones nothing in my CV supports. Be blunt.
  This is the most useful part of your answer.
- **Worth applying?** — yes, yes-with-caveats, or probably not, and why in one
  sentence.

Scoring guide:
- 85-100: meets every hard requirement and most nice-to-haves
- 70-84: meets every hard requirement
- 50-69: misses one hard requirement but has adjacent evidence
- 30-49: misses several
- 0-29: different field or level entirely

If a requirement is about years of experience and my CV gives dates but no
total, say "depends on today's date — your CV shows March 2023 onwards" rather
than calculating a number. You do not reliably know today's date, and guessing
understates real experience.

═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════
PART 2 — THE TAILORED CV
═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════

Rewrite my CV for this job, section by section, in the same order my CV already
uses.

────────── NEVER BREAK THESE ──────────

1. **Invent nothing.** Every skill, tool, employer, job title, date, number and
   qualification must already appear in my CV. If it is not there, it does not
   go in.

2. **Never inflate, never shrink.** Do not change dates, durations, team sizes
   or metrics. Do not calculate how long "to present" has been.

3. **Never claim a skill I do not have.** If the job wants Kubernetes and my CV
   has none, the rewrite has none. Do not imply it with a vaguer phrase.

4. **Adjacent is not equal.** If I know MySQL and they want PostgreSQL, write
   "relational databases (MySQL)" — true and findable. Do not write PostgreSQL.

5. **A listed skill is not an achievement.** A word in my Skills section means I
   have that skill. It is not evidence that I did a specific piece of work with
   it. Do not promote "assessment" from a skills list into an Experience bullet
   reading "developed and implemented assessments" — that is a claim my CV never
   made, and it is the easiest kind of exaggeration to miss.

6. **Do not change what a bullet says I did.** You may change the words that
   describe an activity. You may not change the activity. "Teach grades 11 and
   12" can become "Taught physics to grades 11 and 12" — same work, clearer
   wording. It cannot become "Developed and implemented assessments", because
   that is different work, and my CV never said I did it.

7. **Never delete a number.** If a bullet contains a metric, an outcome or a
   figure, that bullet keeps it. Re-word around it if you like, but a rewrite
   that trades "class average rose from 62 to 78 percent" for a keyword has made
   my CV weaker, not more targeted.

8. **Keep my structure.** Same sections, same order, same headings I already
   use. Do not add sections, reorder them, or convert my layout into your
   preferred format. If my CV has no "Summary", do not create one.

9. **Keep my voice.** If I write short factual bullets, keep them short and
   factual. Do not inflate my writing into recruiter-speak.

10. **Do not describe or alter anything visual.** My photo, logos, colours,
   columns and fonts are not yours to change. Ignore them completely — they stay
   in my original file.

─────────────── WHAT TO ACTUALLY DO ───────────────

Within those rules:

- **Re-word using their vocabulary.** If I wrote "handled customer complaints"
  and they ask for "client relationship management", use their phrase. Same
  work, their words, and their words are what gets matched.
- **Reorder bullets inside a role** so the relevant ones come first. Reordering
  bullets is fine; reordering sections is not.
- **Expand what matters, compress what does not.** A relevant bullet earns
  detail. An unrelated role becomes one line.
- **Surface buried evidence.** If a side project or course meets a requirement,
  give it a bullet where it already sits.
- Add something new **only** if the job asks for it, my CV clearly evidences it
  somewhere, and it is currently missing from where a recruiter would look.

─────────────── HOW TO GIVE IT TO ME ───────────────

Output the tailored CV as **plain text, section by section, matching my original
order**, so I can copy each part straight into my own file.

Mark changed lines like this so I can see them at a glance:

```
EXPERIENCE

Software Developer, Infobyte Solutions — June 2024 to present
  [same]    Designed MySQL schemas and wrote reporting queries
  [changed] Managed client relationships for escalated issues
            (was: "Handled customer complaints escalated from support")
  [moved]   Wrote unit tests, raised coverage 30% to 65%
```

Use `[same]`, `[changed]` with the original in brackets underneath, and
`[moved]` for a bullet you promoted. That way I can update my own document in a
few minutes and nothing about my design changes.

**Do not try to rebuild my CV as a PDF or a document.** You cannot reproduce my
fonts, spacing or photo, and an approximation is worse than the original. I will
paste your text into my own file.

═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════
PART 3 — WHAT I DID NOT ADD, AND WHAT YOU COULD IMPROVE
═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════

**What I deliberately did not add** — every requirement from the job that this
rewrite does not claim, because my CV does not support it. If the list is empty,
say so.

**ATS suggestions — advice only, do not apply these.** Look at how my CV is
built and tell me, briefly, whether any of these would help. Only mention the
ones that actually apply to my file:

- Single column rather than two — many parsers read multi-column CVs out of order
- Text rather than an image or graphic for anything that matters
- Standard section headings ("Experience", not "Where I've Been")
- Dates in a consistent format
- A common font, and no text inside headers or footers
- A photo is fine in India, but parsers ignore it — never put contact details
  inside it
- File saved as PDF with selectable text, not a scan

For each one that applies, say what to change and why in one line. **Do not
rewrite my CV to fix these** — just tell me, and I will decide.

═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════

Here is the job description:

[PASTE THE JOB DESCRIPTION HERE]