Is tailoring the resume per role worth the hours, or does volume just win? Resume

The version that works is neither of your two options. Keep one strong base resume and change only the top summary line and the order of the first three bullets to match the posting, which takes about four minutes rather than an hour. Deep tailoring of every bullet has diminishing returns because the reader is checking whether you have done the thing, not admiring the phrasing. Four minutes times twenty is an evening you can sustain, and sustaining it is most of the game.

Three screens from ninety is roughly one in thirty, which for analyst roles at four years is on the low side but not catastrophic. Before you change the effort level, break the ninety down by source: cold portal applications, recruiter-sourced, and referrals. If eighty-five of them were portal cold applies, the resume is not your variable, the channel is.

Volume wins for the first screen and tailoring wins after it, which is why the comparison feels muddy. Nobody at the resume-reading stage cares that you used their words. The person who cares is the hiring manager reading it before the call, and by then you want the top of the page to look like the job they wrote. Spend the tailoring effort on the applications that reach a human.

Employed, no visa pressure, four years in. You are in the best possible position to be picky, so aim higher and apply less. Twenty a night at a level you would take reluctantly is worse than five a week at a level you actually want.

Track it or you will never know. Date, company, channel, tailored yes or no, outcome. Ten minutes a week and after two months you have your own answer to this question rather than mine.