How to pull the real requirements out of a job advert

Three documents in one

Each part answers a different question, and only one of them will get you filtered out.

• Must-haves. What a recruiter filters on. Usually a short list, usually specific, usually stated with a marker word. If you miss two of these, the application is a lottery ticket.
• Wish list. What the team would like. Longer than the must-have list and softer in its language. Missing several is normal and expected; the wish list exists partly to describe the role's direction.
• Company copy. Values, benefits, the paragraph about the mission. It contains no requirements, it contains the most repeated words in the document, and a naive word-frequency reading of the advert will hand you those words and nothing useful.

That last point is why frequency-based keyword tools mislead. A word repeated four times in the boilerplate outranks a rare, decisive requirement stated once - and the decisive requirement is the one the recruiter is filtering on. Appliora's requirement reader was rebuilt for exactly this reason: it finds the lines that state requirements, works out which are hard and which are optional from the words around them, and pulls out the specific facts rather than ranking the vocabulary.

The marker words

Adverts signal which bucket a line belongs in more consistently than they are given credit for.

Polish and Czech postings are unusually consistent about this, which makes the split more reliable in those two languages than in English.

Two rules make the markers usable. A section heading governs everything under it until the next heading, so a line with no marker of its own inherits the bucket of the "Requirements:" heading above it. And a marker inside a line beats the heading, so "Kubernetes would be a plus" sitting under Requirements is a wish-list item.

Where nothing marks anything, fall back on structure: what is stated first, what is restated in the responsibilities, and what has a number attached to it. Numbers are the strongest signal in an unmarked advert, because nobody writes "at least three years" about something optional.

The ten-minute extraction

Do this once per advert, in a plain text file, before you touch the CV.

1. Paste the advert into a plain text file. The formatting is doing work you do not want - bold text and icons make some requirements look heavier than they are.
2. Delete the company copy. Mission, values, benefits, the paragraph about the team's culture. You are not answering those on the CV.
3. Split what is left into two lists using the markers above, and the heading rule where a line has no marker of its own.
4. Pull the specific facts into their own lines: years of experience asked for, degree level, languages with their levels, named certifications. These are the parts that are checkable rather than arguable.
5. Against each must-have, write where your CV already says it. A line number, a bullet, a skill. If nothing covers it, write "nothing" - do not write what you plan to add.
6. Count the nothings. Two or fewer is a strong application. Four or more is a different job.

The output is a short table you can act on. Everything in the tailoring guide assumes it exists, and the tailoring pass is fast precisely because the thinking happened here.

What to do with a requirement you half meet

Most applications turn on these, and the wrong instinct is to argue with the advert on the CV.

Letting the tool do the first pass

The extraction above is a skill worth having. It is also something the checker does in a few seconds.

Paste an advert into Job Match inside the checker alongside your CV and you get a verdict for each requirement - covered, partial or missing - with the line of your CV that covers it. It runs on match model version 2.0, which is published separately from the CV score because the two models move independently and a reader comparing two runs deserves to know which one changed.

The weighting is published too: 60% must-haves, 15% nice-to-haves, 10% years, 8% languages, 4% education, 3% certifications. Every rule in the requirement reader is a list or a pattern somebody can read and argue with - it is deterministic and offline, with no model guessing at your document.

Questions people ask

How do I tell a must-have from a wish list item?

By the words around it. English adverts mark hard requirements with phrases like required, must have, essential, minimum, at least, proven or demonstrable, and mark optional ones with nice to have, preferred, desirable, a plus, bonus, advantage or ideally. The section heading governs until the next heading, and a marker inside the line itself wins over the heading.

What if the advert has no sections and no markers at all?

Then use position and repetition. The requirements stated first, and the ones restated in the responsibilities section, are the ones the role is actually about. A single mention at the bottom of a long list is usually the wish list even when nothing labels it.

The advert asks for five years and I have three. Do I apply?

Usually yes, and do not restate the shortfall on the CV. Appliora's match model treats a years requirement as partially covered when you are within one year of it and as missing below that, which is roughly how a recruiter reads it too. What closes the gap is scope: three years on work the advert describes beats five years on something adjacent.

Should I copy the advert's exact wording into my CV?

Use the advert's noun for a thing you genuinely do, especially where two industries use different words for the same work. Do not copy a whole requirement line as a bullet - it describes the job rather than what you did in it, and it is immediately recognisable to the person reading.

How many adverts should I read before writing a general CV?

Three or four for the same title, ideally from different companies. Terms that appear in all of them are the profession's vocabulary and belong in your base CV. Terms that appear in one belong only in the version you send to that company.