Some employers, especially in government, universities, and large public bodies, publish a list of selection criteria and then score every applicant against it, point by point. A CV that reads well but never maps to that list will be marked down, no matter how strong the candidate. The fix is to treat the criteria as the skeleton of your application and build your evidence around each item deliberately.

Answer every criterion, in order

Start by copying the criteria out of the posting exactly as written. Each one is a question you must answer with proof, not a claim you can gesture at. If a criterion says “demonstrated experience managing competing deadlines,” a line about being “hard-working” does not count. A specific instance where you juggled three projects to a fixed date does.

Use STAR so each answer stands up

The reliable structure for each criterion is Situation, Task, Action, Result. It forces you past the assertion and into the evidence a scorer can actually credit.

  • Situation: the context, in one line, so the reader knows the stakes.
  • Task: what you specifically were responsible for, not the team in general.
  • Action: the concrete steps you took, told in the first person.
  • Result: the outcome, quantified where you honestly can.

Write one tight paragraph or a short cluster of bullets per criterion, and label it so the scorer can find it without hunting.

Keep structure separate from your CV

Many selection processes ask for the criteria responses as a separate statement alongside a standard CV. When that is the case, keep the CV conventional and put the point-by-point answers in the companion document. When the criteria must live inside the CV itself, add a dedicated section with each criterion as a subheading. Either way, mirror the employer’s exact wording, because reviewers often search for those phrases.

When you are assembling one, the tailoring guide shows how to align evidence to a specific posting, the keyword scanner checks you have echoed the criteria language, and the resume checker catches claims with no proof behind them. Our CV guide covers the base structure to build on.