CV vs job description
Know before you apply — not after you're rejected.
Paste the real advert. See exactly what it asks for, what your record already proves, and the two or three things worth fixing first.
How it works
- 1Job description
- 2Requirement-by-requirement check
- 3Evidence gaps & CV actions
Deterministic comparison · No AI judgement
1 · You paste
The real job description
The full text of the advert you are actually applying for.
2 · CareerPathIQ extracts
Recognised requirements
Terms from your target role's vocabulary and ESCO occupation data that appear in the advert. The advert's own cue words — “essential”, “desirable” — set the weighting.
3 · Measured against
Your career record
Your recorded skills, qualifications, memberships and years of experience.
What you get back · Illustrative example — not your result
Skills coverage
4 of 6 terms
recognised skill terms on record, must-haves weighted most
Qualification alignment
1 of 2
qualification terms matched by recorded quals & memberships
Experience context
6 yrs vs ~5
recorded years against the role's seniority benchmark
Must-have gaps
2 to investigate
uncovered terms the advert marked as essential
This compares the vacancy with your career record — not with the wording of one CV.
The measurement
Three deterministic checks. No black box.
Skill coverage
Recognised skill terms from the advert checked against the skills on your record — exact wording, case-insensitive, with must-have terms weighted most (3:2:1).
Qualification match
Qualification terms checked by word overlap against your recorded qualifications and professional memberships. Statutory requirements are flagged as must-haves.
Experience benchmark
The years across your recorded positions, set against the level the linked role expects. No benchmark on the role means this check is excluded — never guessed.
The three components blend into an overall figure (skills 45 · qualifications 25 · experience 30, redistributed when a check doesn't apply) — the components are the story; the blend is a summary. Employer phrasing the vocabulary doesn't recognise is left out, not scored against you. Nothing is treated as mandatory unless the advert's own words say so.
What it does not mean
- Not a probability of being shortlisted or hired.
- Not an ATS score, and not your ranking against other applicants.
- Not a verdict on your suitability for the role.
- An uncovered term is not proof of a missing capability.
- Not every phrase in an advert is an objective requirement — adverts contain inflated, duplicated and ambiguous wording.
- Not the output of the employer's own screening software.
Reading the result
An uncovered term sends you to investigate — never to a verdict.
- 1
Wording mismatch
You have the evidence, but your record uses different language than the advert. The fix is phrasing — never new facts.
- 2
Evidence gap
You may well have done it, but you have not recorded enough proof. The fix is in your career record — capture the detail, the scale and the outcome.
- 3
Genuine gap
The skill or qualification genuinely is not in your career. The fix is development, not wording — and it is better to know before you apply.
Missing from this CV does not automatically mean missing from your career.
An uncovered term is a wording observation about your record on a given day. Which of the three applies is something only you can confirm — CareerPathIQ does not guess.
A worked example
How one uncovered term is handled.
The advert
- Requirement
Budget ownership
As stated in the advert
Needs stronger evidenceGapRecord says: “Supported the monthly financial review” — budget size and personal ownership are not yet shown.
Action · Investigate: budget size, personal ownership, which decisions were yours, and what outcome resulted.
If the facts support it
Update your record with the real detail — size, ownership, decisions, outcome — and the wording is strengthened from it.
If they don't
Leave it as a genuine gap. The term is never inserted into your record or your CV unbacked.
IllustrativeIllustrative example. CareerPathIQ surfaces the coverage question — it never concludes that you have budget ownership.
Optimisation, honestly bounded
What optimising against this advert can change — and what it never touches.
It can change
- Wording and terminology, where the underlying fact is already on your record
- Ordering and emphasis — the most relevant evidence first for this vacancy
- Which recorded evidence is selected for this particular CV
- Must-have advert terms preserved through every rephrase, so nothing true is lost
It cannot change
- Employers, dates, or job titles
- Qualifications or memberships you do not hold
- Responsibilities you never performed
- Metrics or outcomes you did not supply
- The underlying experience itself
Two separate checks
Job-description comparison is not ATS conformance.
They answer different questions, so CareerPathIQ keeps them apart — and never merges them into one score.
Job-description comparison
Content coverage: how much of this specific vacancy's recognised requirements are represented in your record. Changes with every advert you paste. This page.
ATS conformance
Document structure: deterministic formatting rules — headings, dates, contact fields, no tables or graphics that parsing software drops — checked on the assembled CV at preview and export. A pass/fail rule list, not a score.
The working flow
From advert to application-ready CV.
- 1
Paste the advert
The full job description text — title and source are optional.
- 2
Compare
Recognised requirements are measured against your recorded skills, qualifications and experience.
- 3
Review uncovered terms
Each one with the advert sentence it came from — wording, evidence or genuine gap.
- 4
Strengthen your record
Add evidence, skills or qualifications you genuinely hold.
- 5
Optimise the CV
Selection, ordering and wording from your record — no new facts.
- 6
Preview & export
ATS-conformant PDF or DOCX, built for this vacancy.
Trust
No predictions. No invented evidence. No silent sharing.
- No hiring, shortlist or interview predictions — ever
- The AI improves the language — never the facts.
- No evidence invented to close a gap
- Nothing is shared with recruiters or employers unless you choose to share it
- Saved adverts stay in your account for you to reopen and re-check
“The AI improves the language — never the facts.”
Every optimised sentence traces back to something you recorded and confirmed. The guard that enforces it blocks any number, date, employer or qualification that was not already in your evidence.
Check your record against the real advert.
Start free: build your career record, pick a target role, then paste the vacancy you're actually applying for.