How to read a job description before you apply

Start with the role title and the first paragraph, but do not trust the title on its own. The same title can mean very different work at different employers. 'Analyst' might mean building reports in spreadsheets, writing queries against a database, or calling customers to check data. The paragraph describing what the person will do, often under a heading such as responsibilities or what you will do, is the part that tells you what the job actually is. Read it slowly and ask: what would I be doing on a normal Tuesday?

Next, read the requirements and split them into two lists. Most postings mix what is essential with what would be nice. Words like 'must', 'required' and 'minimum' mark the first list; words like 'preferred', 'good to have', 'exposure to' or 'a plus' mark the second. Postings often describe an ideal candidate rather than the person who will actually be hired, so if you meet most of the must-haves and some of the nice-to-haves, it is usually worth applying. If you meet almost none of the must-haves, it is not a bad ambition, but it is not this application.

Read the eligibility conditions carefully: qualification, year of graduation, minimum marks, experience range and any certification. These are filters, and they are often applied before anyone reads your resume. A role that asks for two to three years' experience will usually not consider a fresher, however good the application. That is not a verdict on you. It is a reason to spend your time on postings where you are eligible.

Then read the practical details before you get attached to the role. Where is the job, and is it fully in the office, hybrid or remote? Are there night shifts or rotating shifts? Is travel involved? Is there a pay range? Is it a permanent role, a contract or an internship, and for how long? A job that looks perfect can be impossible for you because of the location or the hours, and it is better to find out now than after three rounds of interviews.

Now decide honestly. Take the must-have list and, next to each item, write the evidence you have for it: a project, a course you applied, a job, an internship, a result. Where you have clear evidence, you meet it. Where you have some, you partly meet it. Where you have none, ask whether you could close the gap in a few weeks, or whether this is a role for later. This exercise takes ten minutes and saves hours of applying to roles that were never going to fit.

Check the employer before you share anything. Find the organisation's own website yourself, see whether the role appears on its careers page, and make sure any email comes from the company's own domain. A posting that asks for a registration fee, a deposit or payment for training is not a genuine job. A real employer does not charge you to apply.

If you decide to apply, use the job description to tailor your resume. Keep one master resume and make a copy for this role. Put a line at the top naming the role you are applying for. Move the project or experience most relevant to the must-have list to the top. Where the posting uses particular words for skills or tools you genuinely have, use the same words, because both recruiters and the software they use to search applications look for them. Do not add tools or skills you have not used. Each one becomes an interview question, and the interviewer will notice.

The job description is also your best guide to the interview. Almost every responsibility and requirement can become a question: tell me about a time you did this, or how would you approach that. For each must-have, prepare one real example. Read about the employer's product or service and its customers, so you can answer 'why this company?' specifically. And prepare two questions of your own, drawn from things the posting did not explain, such as how the role is trained or how performance is reviewed in the first months.

Finally, keep a record of every application: the role, the employer, the date, the version of the resume you sent and what happened. After a few weeks, the pattern tells you something. If well-matched applications bring no reply, your resume or targeting needs work. If you get interviews but no offers, the preparation does. Either way, one opening read properly teaches you more than a hundred applications sent blind.