— Glossary

Job-search terms, explained plainly.

Short, factual definitions for the words that come up in CVs, ATS reports, interviews, and AI-assisted applications. No jargon, no fluff.

Last updated 2026-05-26

ATS (Applicant Tracking System): Software that recruiters use to receive, parse, filter, and rank job applications. Most companies with more than ~50 employees use one. Common systems include Workday, Greenhouse, Lever, Taleo, iCIMS, and SmartRecruiters. ATS systems read your CV before any human does — if your formatting or keywords don't fit, the recruiter may never see the file.
ATS Score: An estimate of how well a CV matches a specific job posting against the patterns an ATS uses to filter applications. Typical scoring covers keyword match, formatting parseability, years of experience, and section completeness. Above 80 means the CV is likely to clear the filter; below 70 usually needs a revision pass before submitting.
Tailored CV: A CV that has been rewritten to match the specific job and company being applied to — reordered experience, adjusted summary, mirrored keywords. The opposite of a generic CV sent to every job. Tailored CVs respond meaningfully higher than generic ones, especially against ATS filters.
Base CV: The user's primary, master CV — the single source of truth from which tailored versions are generated. In CVVia this is built once during onboarding from uploaded documents plus structured profile data, then reused for every future job application.
Cover Letter: A short letter (200–500 words) accompanying a CV that explains motivation, fit, and one or two specific reasons for applying to this company. Modern recruiters skim cover letters when they have time; for senior roles and most German hiring processes, a cover letter is still expected by default.
Behavioral Interview: An interview format that asks for past examples instead of hypotheticals — typically opened with 'tell me about a time when…'. Behavioral questions are evaluated against the STAR framework (Situation, Task, Action, Result). Most modern hiring loops include at least one behavioral round.
Technical Interview: A skills-focused interview that tests domain knowledge directly — coding for engineers, design critique for designers, case study for product managers and consultants. Often combined with a take-home exercise. Quality of communication weighs as much as correctness in most rubrics.
STAR Method: A four-part structure for answering behavioral interview questions: Situation (the context), Task (the goal), Action (what you did), Result (what changed). STAR keeps answers concrete and measurable — a common interviewer rubric scores STAR completeness explicitly.
Follow-up Email: A short message sent after an application, interview, or offer to acknowledge the next step, thank the interviewer, or ask for a status update. Eight common types: application follow-up, interview thank-you, post-interview status check, offer acceptance, offer negotiation, offer decline, networking outreach, and rescheduling notes.
Application Pipeline (Kanban): A visual board that tracks every job application by status — typically Applied → Interview → Offer → Rejected. Each card represents one role; moving a card updates the application's status and surfaces follow-up reminders. The standard way modern job seekers stay on top of high-volume searches.
Lebenslauf: The German word for CV. A Lebenslauf is the standard hiring document in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Conventions differ from international CVs: a professional photo, date of birth, place of birth, marital status (sometimes), and the applicant's signature are all common — and a tabular reverse-chronological structure is expected.
Knowledge Graph: A connected data structure that represents a user's professional history as entities (jobs, skills, projects, education) and the relationships between them. CVVia builds one from the user's uploaded documents and reuses it as the source of truth for every CV, cover letter, and interview prep session generated later.
Prompt: The instruction or input given to a large language model (LLM). In CV tailoring, the prompt typically includes the user's base CV, the target job description, and the requested edits — short, specific prompts produce higher-quality output than long, vague ones.
GDPR: The European Union's General Data Protection Regulation, in force since 2018. It gives individuals the right to access, correct, export, and delete their personal data, and requires companies handling EU data to disclose how they process it. CVVia is GDPR-compliant: EU-hosted data, full export and deletion from Settings, no model training on user content.
KVKK: Turkey's data protection law (Kişisel Verilerin Korunması Kanunu, in force since 2016). Mirrors most of GDPR's protections for Turkish residents — right to access, correct, and delete personal data; explicit consent for processing. CVVia is KVKK-compliant alongside GDPR.