Tailor vs. rewrite: when to use each button, with real examples
Tailoring shifts emphasis to match a job. Rewriting changes the words. Most users reach for the wrong one first — here's when each is right.
By HumanifyCV team
The two AI actions that look most similar in our builder do very different things, and picking the right one is worth 10–15 match-score points.
Tailor: use when you have a specific job in mind
Tailoring takes your full resume plus a pasted job description and rewrites the sections whose emphasis should shift. Your facts stay the same. Your top bullets get reordered so the ones the JD cares about are first. Your skills section gets pruned to match the stack. A new version snapshot is saved so you can revert.
Tailor is best after you've done one pass of the ATS check and seen a score in the 50s–70s range. If you're in the 80s, tailor won't move the needle. If you're below 40, there's a bigger structural problem that tailoring can't fix.
Rewrite: use when a specific sentence is weak
Rewrite (the section-level button on individual bullets) just makes the words better. No JD context, no reordering. It's for when you've typed a bullet and you can tell it's flat but you don't know how to fix it.
- Rewrite a bullet that doesn't have a number in it yet.
- Rewrite a summary that starts with "I am a..."
- Rewrite anything that uses "responsible for" or "duties included" — these are the two phrases most likely to make a recruiter's eyes glaze.
Rule of thumb: Rewrite improves individual sentences. Tailor positions a whole resume against a specific target. Run ATS → Tailor → Rewrite any remaining weak bullets, in that order.