Does tailoring a resume actually help?
Tailoring helps when it makes real experience easier to find. A recruiter reading for one role looks for its must-haves first. If the matching work is buried in your third bullet under an older job, moving it up and naming it the way the posting does can change how quickly you look like a fit.
It does not help to add skills you do not have or to copy the posting's sentences. Both are easy to spot and hard to defend in an interview. That is why the tailored version only reorders and rewords what is already true, and why each change is listed.
If you prefer to tailor by hand, our step-by-step guide to tailoring a resume walks through a sample posting. Either way, start by seeing what the posting asks for on the resume to job description match.