Many job descriptions and application forms now highlight the importance of personalisation — whether you’re writing your CV or cover letter, even if AI is involved. Companies want to see personality in applications. Take this real-world example:
This is because using AI does not allow your personality to shine through the application. Using AI will only give you generic answers it feeds almost every candidate who asks for a resume or cover letter sample based on the job description.
Recruiters and hiring managers have, through social media posts, also highlighted how candidates who personalise their applications leave a positive impression and make them stand out. Exhibit B:
With the increasing use of AI in recruitment — from both the employer and candidate sides, personalising your application should no longer be an afterthought. It should be a core part of your checklist when applying for jobs.
In this piece, I share real-life examples and personal insights from my job search experiences, highlighting what worked and why. These practical takeaways will help you tailor your applications in ways that make you stand out.
What Does Personalising Your Job Applications Even Mean?
“Personalisation is the action of designing or producing something to meet someone’s individual requirements.” — Oxford Dictionary
In the context of job applications, personalisation means crafting your application materials to fit the specific role, company, and industry.
When employers say, “Let your personality shine through,” they don’t just mean listing your qualifications. They want to see your unique traits, interests, passions, and communication style.
This is what sets you apart from other candidates and helps hiring managers get a real sense of who you are and how you’d fit into their team.
Why Personalisation is Important When Applying for Jobs
1. Hiring is more tailored than ever
As hiring processes become more bespoke and tailored to the needs of specific roles and candidates, you also need to take a personalised approach when applying for jobs.
Submitting generic resumes and cover letters will no longer stand out since companies are prioritising fit, skills, and unique value.
💡 Getting noticed is the first stage because most of the time you have what it takes to do the role, it’s just that there’s so many things that the recruiter and the hiring manager have on their plates. And so you need to give them a reason to prioritise you.
2. It helps you stand out from other candidates
There’s only one YOU. And taking the time to craft applications — from resumes to cover letters, portfolios, and cold emails or messages that speak directly to the role and person you’re referring to is a great way to stand out.
It helps recruiters and hiring managers get a sense of who you are as a person — which can contribute to your success.
In my case, about two or three times when I’ve done personalised applications and the direct approach of reaching out, I skipped interview stages. So I think that in itself is proof that personalisation works — it gets your resume noticed by the right people.
3. It shows you’re genuinely interested in the role
Tailoring your job applications based on your research shows your interest in working with the company. It doesn’t come across as just ticking a job search box to get it out of the way.
The truth is, when you personalise your job applications, it shows. Hiring managers and recruiters notice and appreciate the effort because it makes you stand out — ultimately increasing your chances of landing an interview and even the job.
It also helps you build rapport with interviewers, making conversations feel more natural and engaging.
I remember getting so into a company that I started following podcasts the hiring manager liked. I later realised I genuinely enjoyed them too. In our interviews, we ended up having a long chat about one of these podcasts, making it feel more like a conversation between friends rather than a typical question-and-answer format. To this day, we still exchange recommendations for books and podcasts, all because of that initial connection.
4. It makes your application more relevant
Personalising your resume, cover letter, and portfolio to match a specific job description and company makes your application more relevant to the role you’re applying for.
There’s something my good friend Joel and I often say: If I’m looking for medicine to help with a migraine, and that medicine also makes my skin glow, that’s nice — but it’s not what I care about in that moment. I just need something to fix my migraine.
The same applies to job applications. Tailoring your materials helps decision-makers quickly see why you’re the right fit for the role and the company. Avoid including experiences or skills that, while impressive, aren’t relevant to the job — because they can distract from what really matters.
How to Personalise Your Job Applications Effectively
A 3-Step Approach to Personalisation in the Job Search Process
1. Assess Yourself
First, start with you.
Who are you? What skills and experiences do you have? What are your values? What are your passions and interests? What are your strengths and weaknesses? What is your work style? What kind of company culture and environment do you think you’ll thrive and excel in?
Above all, how can you help the company achieve its goals for the role you’re applying to?
These pieces of information and awareness about yourself are important because they establish the foundation for personalising your applications.
2. Research the Company
Now that you’re more aware of who you are and what you can bring to the table, do your research to learn more about the company. Things like their mission and values, any recent news, all the way down to the job description. What is the company really looking for? What gap are they trying to fill with this role?
This will help you understand what the company wants and needs and how your skills and experiences can address them. It will also help you figure out ways to present your information.
For instance, if you find that the company uses a particular tone in their materials, you try to use a similar tone — in your cover letters or portfolios. If they use British English, you use that if it is not the default language you use.
3. Personalise Your Application
The third step is to apply the information you have in various scenarios as you’ll see below.
What to Personalise When Applying for Jobs
CV/Resume: Highlight specific achievements and remove irrelevant experience.
When you’re in a full job search mode, there are some roles that you autopilot. For instance, you can just send the same resume across. But when you find about 3 or 4 roles that you absolutely would like to get into, for those ones, you need to put in more effort in customising your resume.
Here’s how to tailor your resume effectively:
1. Match your resume to the job description. Highlight relevant skills, experiences, and achievements. Mind you, this isn’t just about adding relevant skills and experiences. It’s also about taking irrelevant ones out — the goal is not to fill up space.
If possible, split your screen. Place the job description on one side and your resume on the other. Then you can do a direct mapping. This helps you to be very ruthless in removing the things that you know the job description is not asking for. That way, you can shine a brighter light on the things that the job description has asked for.
2. Make your resume unique to YOU. It’s okay to get suggestions of what to include in the resume from AI tools like Mande Quant. However, it behooves you to make those specific to what YOU have achieved.
Imagine 1000 people applying for an Operations Analyst role; and 75% of the job applicants (including you) used ChatGPT to generate their resumes with a prompt like: Generate a resume for an Operations Analyst based on this job description.
There will be so many similar resumes. It will be hard for hiring managers and recruiters to miss. So ask yourself, “What can I do to make this resume stand out? What do I need to highlight? What do I need to make specific to my experience? What do I need to discard because it’s irrelevant?”
Cover Letter: Express why you want the role at the company
There’s this notion that hiring managers and recruiters do not read cover letters. So only a handful of people make the effort to create personalised ones.
Just like resumes, if you’re using AI, there’s no way your cover letter will stand out if thousands of people used the AI you used.
So what do you do instead? Personalise it.
- Express your interest and passion for the role and company.
- Highlight specific experiences and achievements relevant to the job.
- Show that you’ve done your homework. Mention company initiatives, values, or challenges they’re trying to solve and how you can contribute.
The way you write your cover letter matters too. It should sound like you — authentic, engaging, and intentional.
Portfolio: Only showcase relevant projects
It’s good to have tons of experience and projects to show off in your portfolio. But the question to ask is if what you’re showing is relevant to the job you’re applying to.
One way to ensure the portfolio is tailored and personalised for the role you’re applying to is to only show what is relevant to that specific role.
Again, just like you would do for resumes, have a master portfolio. Then from it, create sub-portfolios — allowing you to show the company only what they need and want to see.
Moreover, creating a new portfolio for a specific role will help you tailor it even more by using the company’s brand colours, tone, and so much more.
Cold Emails to Recruiters & Hiring Managers: Reference a shared interest or direct company need.
Another way to personalise your job applications is to reach out to recruiters and hiring managers. This will keep you top of mind and also make you stand out from candidates who didn’t.
To personalise your cold emails:
1. Research the people you’re reaching out to. Understand what they do and what they care about. If you share an interest, use that to craft your message.
💡 Remember not to focus on the personal. Stick to their professional opinions and industry-related topics to avoid seeming intrusive.
A very typical example was my outreach to the hiring manager when I was trying to get into Oyster. Even though I did so much research on him, the things that I latched onto were his opinion on getting more black and coloured people into the tech space, and his opinion about work.
2. Find where your target contacts are active online. Professional stalking (the ethical kind!). Look up your target contacts on LinkedIn, their personal blogs, or Substack — wherever they engage professionally.
3. Make your outreach relevant, not generic. This will mean figuring out what the gap is or what they really care about and use that as a way to get your foot in the door.
💡 If you can, connect with someone in the company who can share why they’re hiring for a role and what gap they’re trying to fill. Then use this information to craft a highly personalised email that directly speaks to their needs.
Depending on how you reach out, if you have enough space in your introductory message, you can talk about how your specific skills and experiences can help them solve the problem they are hiring for.
4. Use different outreach methods strategically. Send a connection request on LinkedIn or an email explaining what you think the company is working towards and why you’d be a great fit
💡 When going the email route, a prospecting tool like RocketReach can help you find the emails of the right people to reach out to.
Another option is to consider sending an audio note — as I recently did for the hiring manager of the new company I work with.
💡 You have to be creative with your job applications. Find new ways to let your personality shine through.
💡 Don’t overlook the power of connections. Referrals are one of the easiest ways to get a foot in the door. If you already have trust with someone in your network, they can provide valuable insights — such as which teams are hiring, what they’re looking for, or if a key team member has recently left. With this knowledge, you can tailor your application and outreach to show exactly how you can fill that gap.
Recommended Reading: How to Build and Expand Your Network
Common Mistakes to Avoid When Applying for Jobs
The above are core ways to personalise your job applications. However, there are some things you’re likely to overlook — which may send a message that you did not spend time on this application. Or that a human did not look at it to add their human touch.
Here are 4 common mistakes or errors you need to avoid in your job applications:
1. Not proofreading your documents
Review all your application documents and emails to ensure there are no typos. grammatical errors, missing punctuations, word omissions, repetitions, etc.
Additionally, review and click on all your links to ensure they’re working and lead you to the right pages.
2. Submitting generic applications
It’s as simple as it reads. Don’t use the same resume, cover letter, and sometimes portfolio to apply for different roles without tailoring them to the job description.
The job titles may be the same, but the requirements and culture of each company may differ.
3. Failing to follow instructions
It’s one thing to turn in a personalised and tailored job application. And it’s also another thing to turn in a personalised job application that does not follow instructions.
This is where your attention to detail skills need to come in. Pay attention to instructions on how to apply and follow them. Don’t just do what you think is right because that’s how you always apply for jobs.
4. Not making relevant information visible
Make relevant information like your portfolio link, contact details, LinkedIn profile URL, and any other relevant information visible on your resume and cover letter.
If you’re applying through LinkedIn and there’s no slot to input your portfolio, make sure people can easily identify your portfolio once they land on your profile.
5. Applying to too many jobs without focus (Spraying and Praying)
It may seem like a good idea to apply to as many jobs as possible, but mass-applying without personalisation rarely works. Instead of using the same generic application for dozens of roles, focus on a few that truly align with your skills and interests.
It’s worth noting that the effort pays off when you put it in. So if you use something that is highly personalised for a specific role for another, it’s unlikely to work.
💡 You can’t personalise for too many roles. My recommendation is to take 3 or 4 roles where you know you will go very deep, and for the rest, you can go wide but shallow.
Final Thoughts
As I mentioned in the article on how to use AI in your job search, recruitment and hiring are inherently personal and you continuously need to let your personality show — something you cannot do with AI-only content. So take time to tailor your applications to specific roles and apply the personalisation techniques you’ve learned in this article.
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