Let me show you what a tailored résumé actually looks like

Most résumés I see from government job applicants make the same mistake: they’re written once, then sent to every posting unchanged.

That might work in the private sector. In local government, it usually doesn’t. Hiring panels and screeners in human resources are matching your résumé against a very specific list, including the minimum qualifications, essential functions, and desired knowledge, skills, and abilities listed in that exact posting. This isn’t about beating an algorithm, either. In local government, it’s most often a real person doing this review by hand, often with a stack of applications and limited time, deciding whether your résumé clearly shows the match. A résumé that doesn’t visibly reflect that list gets passed over, even when the person behind it is genuinely qualified. I’ve seen it happen more times than I can count, and I have done it myself.

What a tailored résumé looks like

“Tailor your résumé” is easy advice to give and hard advice to picture, so let me show you.

Say a posting for an Administrative Analyst role lists “experience managing high-volume public-facing services” as a desired qualification. Jordan, one of the example applicants I use in my guides, has exactly that experience, but Jordan’s first draft bullet read:

Managed daily front-desk operations and handled customer inquiries.

True, but generic. It could describe a dozen different jobs, and it doesn’t use a single word from the posting.

The tailored version:

Managed high-volume public counter operations, resolving an average of 50+ resident inquiries daily while maintaining accuracy across permitting and billing systems.

Same underlying experience. Completely different odds of getting noticed, because now it mirrors the exact language the reviewer is scanning for, and it gives context through the volume and intensity of Jordan’s experience.

That’s the whole skill, repeated across every bullet on the page: say what you did, but say it in the words the posting already gave you, and provide meaningful context to that experience.

Try this before your next application

Pull up your résumé next to the job posting. Circle every bullet that doesn’t use language from the posting. Those are the ones to rewrite first, not the whole résumé.

That rewriting is real work, and it has to happen for every application. There’s no way around it. Which is exactly why I’d rather you apply thoughtfully to a handful of roles you’re a genuine fit for than spread that same effort thin across dozens of postings.

A head start, if you want one

Everything I just walked through, you can absolutely do on your own with your current résumé and the job posting in front of you. If you’d like a head start, though, that’s what the Government Résumé Template is for: a well-structured base résumé, already organized the way local government hiring panels expect to see it, plus a full example so you can see this kind of tailoring done from start to finish. It’s part of the Starter resource library, along with the rest of the guides I’ve built from the hiring side of the table.

Insider tip: The applicants who get callbacks aren’t always the most qualified people who applied. They’re often just the ones who made it easiest for a tired reviewer to see that they were qualified. That’s a fixable problem, not a talent gap.

Want new issues first? Subscribe for free below.