How to read a job title
A title tells a recruiter what to search for. The requirements underneath it are where the job is. Two adverts with the same title can want opposite things from the person who fills it.
Companies reuse titles because candidates search by title and internal pay bands are built around them. Neither of those requires two companies to mean the same thing by the words.
The advert's first line names the title everyone already agreed to search for. The requirements underneath are where the actual job is described. They can point in genuinely different directions while the title stays identical.
Tailoring the same CV to both, because the title matched, answers the title. It doesn't answer the job.
Reading as ownership
The requirements talk about deciding, prioritising, or being accountable for an outcome: “will set the roadmap for,” “owns the relationship with,” “accountable for the result of.”
What shows it: a decision you made that others had to live with. Then what happened because you made it that way.
Reading as delivery
The requirements talk about executing against someone else's plan: “will coordinate delivery of,” “supports the team responsible for,” “keeps X on track.”
What shows it: something that was already decided, that you got done anyway, on time, with the obstacles that came up along the way.
Both adverts below are titled “Marketing Coordinator.” One reads as ownership. One reads as delivery.
Advert A asks for
“You will own the content calendar and decide what our growing audience needs to hear about next.”
Advert B asks for
“You will coordinate the delivery of campaign emails against the marketing plan, keeping every send on schedule.”
Amara has four things she can actually point to from her first job. The same four, read against two different requirements:
“Ran the weekly social content calendar for six months, deciding what went out and when.”
For “owns the calendar”
Owned the social content calendar for six months, deciding what went out and when.
For “coordinates delivery”
Ran the weekly content calendar for six months, keeping every post on schedule.
“Coordinated an end-to-end product-launch email campaign, working to the marketing manager's brief and send-date plan.”
For “owns the calendar”
Left out — a campaign run to someone else's plan doesn't answer an advert asking who decides what happens next.
For “coordinates delivery”
Delivered an end-to-end product-launch email campaign to the marketing manager's brief and send-date plan, on schedule.
“Noticed open rates dropping on Tuesday sends and moved the newsletter to Thursday, without being asked.”
For “owns the calendar”
Spotted falling open rates and changed the send day on my own initiative.
For “coordinates delivery”
Left out — a plan changed on your own initiative is the opposite of keeping someone else's send schedule.
“Kept a shared spreadsheet logging open and click rates for every campaign sent.”
For “owns the calendar”
Logged open and click rates for every campaign in a shared spreadsheet.
For “coordinates delivery”
Logged open and click rates for every campaign in a shared spreadsheet.
One line survives untouched. Neither advert asks how the campaigns did, so there is nothing in either requirement to lean the wording toward — tailoring stops where the evidence stops, not where the page changes.
First three lines, for Advert A
First three lines, for Advert B
Tailoring is not changing what happened. It is choosing the evidence this advert asks to see, and making that evidence specific.
Paste that advert and your own CV. Friday reads the requirements underneath the title, the same way Advert A and B were read above.
Check your CVUpload it alongside your CV and Friday reads the requirements underneath the title, not the title itself.
Check your CVThe title is what a recruiter typed into a search box. The requirements are what they actually meant by it.
This is also the real version of “tailor your CV for every role”, advice that is true and unhelpfully vague until it names what changes. What changes is which of your own decisions and deliveries you lead with. The same six months of work usually contains both, and only one of them answers the advert in front of you.
A CV built to satisfy the title reads as generically qualified to both kinds of employer and specifically convincing to neither.
The requirements have a vocabulary of their own, and the phrases that repeat across adverts are screening for something more specific than they look like they are.
Upload the advert alongside your CV and Friday tells you, requirement by requirement, what your CV shows against this specific posting.
Friday is a career evidence engine for people who have done the work and cannot get the page to show it.
It is early and there are rough edges. What people report is what gets fixed first.
Paste as many adverts as you like, and one CV is composed for you to keep. The record stays yours whether or not you ever pay.