A real run · 27 September 2026

One senior job ad, start to finish

By Hillel Lithwick, founder of ApexHunt · Melbourne

The first run we published was a marketing role. This is the second, on a different discipline and a level up: a real Journey Beyond Executive General Manager ad, a travel General Manager's CV, and everything ApexHunt produced from them, unedited, including a rewrite the product scored below her original and said so, and the one sentence its checks told her to look at again.

The candidate is synthetic. We wrote Megan Halloran's CV ourselves so we could publish it in full, which no real user's CV allows. It was written on 18 September to fit this ad for an advertising image, and it scored 87 then, so treat the 88% as what a strong fit looks like, not as a typical result: the median across our published dataset of senior applications is 72, and the first run's candidate scored 87 on the same day, because both CVs were written to fit their ad. The ad is real, quoted as Journey Beyond published it. Every output below is exactly what the live product returned on 27 September 2026, run through the same routes a user's browser calls, with the CV parsed into a profile first the way a new account does it. Nothing was edited, reordered or improved. This is the third pass of this run: the first two were read by three reviewers before publication and the product was fixed between them, which section 5 sets out.

1. The inputs

Executive General Manager Travel & Holidays
Journey Beyond
2000 Sydney New South Wales
$220,000, 225,000 per year
Full time
Adelaide or Sydney | National Leadership Role
Ready to shape the future of travel at one of Australia's leading tourism businesses? Join Journey Beyond and lead the strategy, growth and performance of our Travel & Holidays business. As a key member of the Commercial Leadership Team, you'll drive customer growth, commercial outcomes and strategic partnerships across a diverse portfolio of tourism brands and experiences.
Why Join Us
Join the Commercial Leadership Team and influence business-wide strategy
Flexible/hybrid working arrangements where operationally suitable
Lead a nationally focused business with Adelaide or Sydney based flexibility
Generous discounts on Journey Beyond travel and experiences
Study Assistance Program and career development opportunities
About the Role

Executive General Manager Travel & Holidays
Journey Beyond
2000 Sydney New South Wales
$220,000, 225,000 per year
Full time

Adelaide or Sydney | National Leadership Role

Ready to shape the future of travel at one of Australia's leading tourism businesses? Join Journey Beyond and lead the strategy, growth and performance of our Travel & Holidays business. As a key member of the Commercial Leadership Team, you'll drive customer growth, commercial outcomes and strategic partnerships across a diverse portfolio of tourism brands and experiences.

Why Join Us

Join the Commercial Leadership Team and influence business-wide strategy
Flexible/hybrid working arrangements where operationally suitable
Lead a nationally focused business with Adelaide or Sydney based flexibility
Generous discounts on Journey Beyond travel and experiences
Study Assistance Program and career development opportunities

About the Role

The Executive General Manager, Travel & Holidays is responsible for the strategy, growth and performance of Journey Beyond's Travel Centre and Holidays business. Leading a national team, you'll drive revenue growth, customer loyalty and distribution performance while developing compelling travel products and strengthening strategic partnerships across the tourism industry. You'll oversee both the Travel Centre and Holidays businesses, identifying new growth opportunities and helping shape the future direction of the business.

Key responsibilities include:

Drive the growth, profitability and performance of the Travel & Holidays business
Lead product development, packaging and distribution strategies across air, accommodation, touring and experiences
Expand wholesale, trade and third-party distribution channels
Build strategic partnerships with airlines, tourism operators and key industry suppliers
Lead and develop a high-performing team focused on commercial and customer outcomes

About You

You are an experienced travel industry executive with a track record of growing travel, tourism or holiday businesses and leading high-performing teams. Commercially astute and customer-focused, you're equally comfortable setting strategy, building partnerships and driving operational performance.

You'll bring:

10+ years' senior leadership experience within travel, tourism, wholesale travel, OTA or related sectors
Proven success growing packaged travel products, customer engagement and distribution channels
Strong experience in supplier partnerships, contracting and commercial negotiations
Commercial acumen with the ability to identify growth opportunities and drive performance
Outstanding leadership, stakeholder engagement and influencing skills

About Us

Journey Beyond is Australia's leading experiential tourism group, operating some of the country's most iconic travel experiences across rail, cruise, marine, accommodation and adventure tourism.

We're proud to be part of Journey Beyond, Australia's leading experiential tourism group. Across our portfolio of brands, we're passionate about creating unforgettable experiences and connecting guests to some of the most unique destinations across Australia and New Zealand.

Successful candidates are required to provide a current National Police Clearance.

A pre-employment medical may be required as part of the recruitment process.

MEGAN HALLORAN
Sydney, NSW | 0400 000 000 | megan.halloran​@example.com | linkedin.com/in/meganhalloran-example
GENERAL MANAGER, HOLIDAYS AND DISTRIBUTION
Fourteen years in Australian travel, the last six running packaged holiday businesses end to end: product, pricing, supplier contracts, trade and wholesale distribution, and the teams that sell them. Commercial leader who sets the plan, holds the P&L and stays close to the customer and the trade.
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
General Manager, Holidays and Distribution, Southern Cross Travel Group (packaged holidays and wholesale, 420 staff, ANZ), Sydney
March 2020 to present
- Own the Holidays P&L, A$146M revenue in FY25, up from A$71M in FY21 through the recovery; gross margin held at 17% while the market discounted.
- Lead a team of 38 across product, contracting, trade sales and holiday consultants; four direct reports, three of them promoted internally.

MEGAN HALLORAN
Sydney, NSW | 0400 000 000 | megan.halloran​@example.com | linkedin.com/in/meganhalloran-example

GENERAL MANAGER, HOLIDAYS AND DISTRIBUTION
Fourteen years in Australian travel, the last six running packaged holiday businesses end to end: product, pricing, supplier contracts, trade and wholesale distribution, and the teams that sell them. Commercial leader who sets the plan, holds the P&L and stays close to the customer and the trade.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

General Manager, Holidays and Distribution, Southern Cross Travel Group (packaged holidays and wholesale, 420 staff, ANZ), Sydney
March 2020 to present
- Own the Holidays P&L, A$146M revenue in FY25, up from A$71M in FY21 through the recovery; gross margin held at 17% while the market discounted.
- Lead a team of 38 across product, contracting, trade sales and holiday consultants; four direct reports, three of them promoted internally.
- Built the packaged product range from 90 to 260 itineraries across Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific: touring, rail, cruise and stay packages.
- Grew trade and wholesale distribution to 1,900 active agencies and two online travel agencies; trade revenue share rose from 31% to 52% of Holidays sales.
- Negotiate and contract accommodation, touring and cruise suppliers, 300 contracts a year, with volume commitments that improved buy rates by 8 to 12 points on the top 40 suppliers.
- Introduced dynamic packaging for accommodation and touring in 2023; average booking value up 14% and consultant handling time down a third.
- Present the Holidays plan and performance to the board quarterly and sit on the group Commercial Leadership Team.

Head of Product and Contracting, Southern Cross Travel Group, Sydney
July 2016 to February 2020
- Ran product development and supplier contracting for the packaged range, with a team of 11 product and contracting managers.
- Signed exclusive stay-and-experience deals with 22 properties and operators in Queensland, the Northern Territory and New Zealand.
- Launched the rail holidays range in 2018, which reached A$9M revenue in its second year.

Senior Product Manager, Pacific Holiday Wholesale, Brisbane
February 2012 to June 2016
- Managed the South Pacific and Queensland product portfolios for a wholesaler selling through 1,200 retail agencies.
- Delivered the annual brochure and pricing cycle across 60 suppliers; portfolio revenue grew 41% over four years.

EDUCATION
Bachelor of Business (Tourism Management), Griffith University, 2011

SKILLS
Packaged product development, supplier contracting, trade and wholesale distribution, OTA partnerships, dynamic packaging, P&L ownership, board reporting, team leadership, stakeholder management

2. The match report (23 seconds)

The first thing a user sees after pasting an ad. One reading of the ad against the CV, with the ad's own words quoted in each gap so the candidate can check them herself.

What to notice: every strength is a figure from her CV read back, and each gap opens with the ad's own phrase. The two gaps that matter, airline partnerships and customer loyalty, are exactly the two things her CV never mentions, and the letters below decline to claim either. What the report does not do: the ad names the Travel Centre twice as half the job, and no surface in this run mentions it. And the positioning advice tells the letter to cite air-inclusive packaging she has never done; the letters, rightly, do not. This 88 and the 91 in the next section are two different instruments reading one CV, not one measurement repeated.

3. The tailored CV (81 seconds to write, 47 more to score)

ApexHunt rewrote her CV for this ad, then scored her original and the rewrite against the same frozen rubric extracted from the ad. Here is the part most tools would not show you.

Why it went that way: her original CV was already written around what this ad asks for, so the rewrite had nothing to add and a little to lose. That matches our published tailoring data, where CVs that already fit the role well gain little and one in four rewrites score lower. The rewrite itself, unedited:

Product and distribution: packaged product development, dynamic packaging, OTA partnerships, trade and wholesale distribution
Commercial: P&L ownership, supplier contracting, pricing, volume negotiation
Leadership and governance: team leadership, board reporting, stakeholder management

Bachelor of Business (Tourism Management), Griffith University, 2011

The checks that ran on that rewrite

Every sentence of a tailored CV is checked against the candidate's own material before she sees it. In this run 13 claims matched her CV, 0 did not, and 1 was flagged for her to check. Shown here exactly as the product showed them beside the draft:

Read each flag against the quoted CV line. A flag is a question, not a verdict: the writing model can put a tool or a figure into a CV that the candidate never wrote, and these checks do not trust the writing model. A candidate who sent a rewrite unread could send a CV with an invented tool in it. That is the reason the checks exist, and the reason we show them.

4. The cover letter (84 seconds)

Three variants are written; the product recommends one. This is the recommended variant, in full, as returned. The sign-off is added when the letter is downloaded.

The checks on the letter

The same claim check runs on each variant against her CV, plus a check for a financial year that has already ended and for a years figure that contradicts her CV's own:

• P&L Operator: 13 claims matched, 0 not found in her CV, 0 flagged to check.
• Formal: 11 claims matched, 0 not found in her CV, 0 flagged to check.
• Direct: 11 claims matched, 0 not found in her CV, 0 flagged to check.

The letter's own five quality checks, as the product reported them:

• Open · Industry connection: Megan's CV covers packaged Australian travel, wholesale and tourism, which is the same broad sector as Journey Beyond, but no same-trade connection to Journey Beyond's specific brands (rail, marine, adventure) is explicitly evidenced in the candidate data, so no industry-connection opening was used
• OK · Function grounding: P&L ownership ('Own the Holidays P&L, A$146M revenue in FY25'), packaged product development ('Built the packaged product range from 90 to 260 itineraries'), supplier contracting ('Negotiate and contract accommodation, touring and cruise suppliers, 300 contracts a year'), trade and wholesale distribution ('Grew trade and wholesale distribution to 1,900 active agencies and two online travel agencies'), team leadership ('Lead a team of 38 across product, contracting, trade sales and holiday consultants'), OTA partnerships ('two online travel agencies'), dynamic packaging ('Introduced dynamic packaging for accommodation and touring in 2023'), board reporting ('Present the Holidays plan and performance to the board quarterly') | coverage: 6 of 6 JD-owned functions answered; airline partnerships and customer loyalty noted as gaps and not claimed
• OK · Employer diagnosis: letter combines the JD's dual-business scope (Travel Centre and Holidays) with its stated priorities (distribution expansion, product development, supplier partnerships) to observe that year-one success requires both strategic direction and immediate commercial delivery, a judgement the employer could reasonably weigh differently
• OK · Thesis: 'That is the work I have been doing at Southern Cross Travel Group, where I run the Holidays P&L and have grown it from A$71M to A$146M in FY25, holding gross margin at 17% while the broader market discounted.'
• OK · Close: "I would like to discuss how the Travel & Holidays business can grow its distribution reach and product range in FY27 and beyond."

5. What three reviewers found in the first two passes, and what changed

Before this page went out we had the run read by three people playing three parts: a recruiter who places executive travel roles, a General Manager deciding whether to trust the tool with her own CV, and a sceptic with the raw data and the code. They read the second pass of this run on the evening of 27 September 2026. What they found, in the product, not the page:

• The match report's level note and the rewrite's opening line both gave her “a scope of 420 staff”. Her CV says the company has 420 staff and that she leads a team of 38. A second-model read flagged the rewrite line; the deterministic check passed it, because the digits exist somewhere in her CV; the report had no check over it at all. Fixed: a headcount that a CV gives to an employer is never the candidate's scope now, on the report, the rewrite and the letters, and both writers are told which figures are the employer's.
• On the first pass the product's preservation step, which lists the named systems in a CV so the rewrite keeps them, read her capitalised name and the region “ANZ” as software and printed “Systems and platforms: MEGAN, ANZ” in the technical block. Fixed: a shouted name line, a heading or a region is never a platform, measured across every stored CV before the change went out.
• The report said she “leads a national team” and a letter said the same. The ad says “national” four times; her CV never does. Fixed: an adjective the ad uses and the CV does not is deleted from the report and flagged on a rewrite. In this pass the flag fired once, on the rewrite's closing line about the employer (“Ready to bring that commercial and operational scope to a nationally focused experiential travel business.”), where the word describes Journey Beyond, not her; the check is literal and says so.
• The letter's own close check quoted a sentence the letter no longer carried, because the product rewrites one family of generic closes after the model has already graded itself. Fixed: the check now reports the close as shown.
• A letter said she could “work to the on-site requirements the role describes” against an ad that says flexible and hybrid. Fixed: a claim about the working arrangement now has to match what the ad says, or it is flagged.

What the reviewers found that is not fixed, and still shows in the run above:

• Nothing on any surface mentions the Travel Centre, which the ad names twice as half the job. A hiring manager would ask about it first.
• The positioning advice asks the letter to cite air-inclusive packaging her CV does not contain. The letters ignore that advice, which is right, but the report should not have given it.
• The scoring rubric bundles “air, accommodation, touring and experiences” into one requirement and marks it strong on three of the four, while the report calls airlines a gap. Two surfaces, two readings of one line in the ad.
• The checks test what a rewrite adds, not what it removes: her CV's one customer sentence, “stays close to the customer and the trade”, is gone from the rewrite while customer loyalty sits in the gap list.

What this run shows, and what it does not

It shows the product reading a senior ad and quoting it back rather than inventing requirements, telling the candidate the truth about her own rewrite, and flagging what it could not find in her CV. Those behaviours are the whole point. A tool that always says the rewrite improved things is not measuring anything, and a tool that never shows its own errors is asking you to trust it.

It does not show a typical score. Megan was written to fit this ad. It does not show the clarifying questions a real first run asks before writing, because this run skipped them to keep the page short. And it is one run: the same inputs scored again move a few points, which is why the product reads a score twice before it calls a rewrite weaker.

What it costs: the free check on the landing page needs no account. A free account adds the match report on any ad, and your first tailored CV and first cover letter in full. Your match score and full gap analysis on every role, plus your first tailored CV rewrite and cover letter in full, no credit card needed. After that each prepared application is A$15, or Pro at A$39/mo for up to 6 a month plus role prioritisation.

Related: what our before-and-after data says about tailoring and what senior Australian job ads actually ask for.