By Michael Muir · 20 years in executive search

The CV you would write if you knew what a recruiter was looking for.

Your career, told the way hiring managers need to hear it. Section by section, with the reasoning you never normally see. Two CVs, ready to go. Yours within 24 hours.

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£49 Launch Pricing · 24hr Delivery · Satisfaction Guarantee

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The Founder · Why This Exists

Michael Muir, Founder of The Other Side

Michael Muir

Founder, The Other Side

Your CV will make the first impression. Make sure you get to make the second.

It is the single document that represents you, your career, and the body of work you have built. It arrives before you do. It speaks when you cannot.

For twenty years I have worked as a recruiter, placing candidates across high-calibre boutiques through to FTSE 100 companies. Thousands of CVs pass across my desk every year.

Most belong to people who are exceptional at what they do but have never had someone show them how a recruiter actually reads a career. That is what this report gives you.

The methodology comes from two decades of live search work. The standards are transferable across sectors, levels, and disciplines.

This is not a CV writing service. CV writers polish. AI tools optimise for keywords. What I have built is different: twenty years of craft in positioning a career so it lands with the reader who decides. The value proposition. The narrative arc. The context behind each role that makes it readable to someone who does not already know the company. How to handle anomalies that would otherwise raise questions. How to make all of it fit the specific target you are pointing at. It is the science and the art of presenting a career, from the side of the desk that decides.

The Reality

It is not your experience. It is your positioning.

Per vacancy

200+

CVs received

A recruiter sees over two hundred CVs for a single role. Yours has seconds to stand out. Most do not.

The competition for attention is not what you think. It is not experience. It is not qualifications. It is whether a recruiter can position you, instantly, in their mental model of the market.

30

Seconds on the first pass

That is how long most recruiters spend on the initial scan. The first page of your CV does most of the work.

0

Substantive feedback

A rejection email is a receipt, not feedback. The read from the side of the desk that decided is almost never shared.

The Report · 05 Chapters

CV intelligence from an active recruiter.

Every part of your CV through a recruiter's lens. Five chapters, each with the thinking behind the output, then the output itself.

Chapter Iof V

Recruiters read CVs against five dimensions. Most people have never seen the framework.

There is a framework behind every recruiter read, whether the recruiter calls it that or not. The matrix plots your current CV against each of the five dimensions: professional identity, achievement framing, career architecture, information hierarchy, and audience calibration. For each one, you see where you sit (foundational, developing, or optimised), and what the optimised version would look like at your seniority. A clear, specific diagnostic. Not vague advice.

In the report

A competency matrix that shows exactly where your CV sits against five dimensions, and what optimised looks like at your seniority.

Chapter IIof V

A rewrite without the reasoning is worthless in six months.

Every change in the rewrite comes with an annotation that explains it. The original line. The new line. A short note on why the new version lands differently with the reader: word choice, emphasis, structure, the positioning of an achievement inside a bullet. The document becomes a craft lesson, not a finished product you were handed.

In the report

Every section of your CV rewritten, with the recruiter's reasoning annotated at each step. Not just what to say. Why it lands differently.

Chapter IIIof V

Your career tells a story. Your CV probably is not telling it.

A CV that lists jobs chronologically is a history lesson. A CV that builds a case is a career document. Recruiters read careers in phases, each connecting to the next and leading somewhere deliberate. The question is not where you have been: given where you have been, what are you obviously the right person for next?

In the report

Your career phases mapped, your strategic narrative surfaced, and your value proposition rewritten.

Chapter IVof V

LinkedIn is not a social network. It is a credibility surface.

After a recruiter reads your CV, the first thing they do is check your LinkedIn. If it tells a different story, or nothing at all, their confidence drops. Your LinkedIn has to reinforce the positioning on your CV. Most profiles undermine it.

In the report

Your LinkedIn headline and About section rewritten to work as a credibility layer that reinforces your CV positioning.

Chapter Vof V

Not every reader knows your employer. Most CVs assume they do.

A hiring manager coming from outside your sector, or a different corner of it, sees the company name with no mental model for the business: the size, the ownership, the specialism, or what the role actually involved at that scale. The report reframes every role with a one-line context that tells the reader what the company is, at what scale, and what the role meant in that specific setting.

In the report

A one-line context for every role: what the company is, at what scale you operated, and what the role actually involved in that setting.

Five chapters · Fully annotated · Yours to keep

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From the first readers

Before this was a product.

For twenty years Michael has produced this kind of analysis privately for Buy Side Recruitment candidates. When enough of them said the document was more useful than anything they had paid for elsewhere, it became clear it should exist as a standalone product. These are some of the things they said.

A CV writer rewrote my CV in a week and it still sounded like a list of jobs. Michael sent a report the next day that did something different. It gave me the narrative behind my career, why each move led to the next, where the through-line was. I have been reading it back for weeks.

Finance Director

PE-backed consumer

Same career, two documents. The Profile rewritten to point at a different target. Different achievements leading the page. Bullets reordered. The editing was not cosmetic, it was surgical. You can tell within the first page that the thinking is coming from a world-class recruiter, and that judgement is what you are paying for.

Head of FP&A

UK-listed financial services

Twenty-four hours to arrive, twenty minutes to read. I had paid CV writers £300 for less. What I did not expect was the rest of it. For the first time I knew how to explain my career in a sentence, what made me stand out, and the value I actually brought. That clarity showed up in the way I turned up to every conversation from there on.

Senior Manager

FMCG

Real feedback from Michael’s candidate base

Names withheld · Roles and sectors verified

How It Works

Three steps. One payment. Less than a day.

How the report gets produced, and what it costs to produce one for you.

01 · Upload

Send Michael your CV

Tell him the role you are targeting if you have one in mind. Anything else you think helps, add it.

02 · Produce

Michael produces your report

He reads your CV the way a recruiter reads one for a real search. Then he produces the report: what he would change, why, section by section, and the two CVs ready to work with.

03 · Deliver

Your report arrives

Within 24 hours. The diagnostic, the rewrite with his notes, a map of your career, a LinkedIn rewrite, and two CVs to work with.

The Price

One report. £49. Launch pricing while it lasts.

CV Intelligence Report

£49£99Launch pricing · First 100 reports

One payment. Yours to keep.

  • Recruiter diagnostic
  • Section-by-section rewrite with reasoning
  • Career narrative and value proposition
  • LinkedIn headline and About rewritten
  • Competency matrix
  • Two CVs, ready to go
  • Yours within 24 hours
Get Your Report

Report not delivered or materially incomplete? Full refund.

Secure payment via Stripe. Your CV is processed confidentially.

Further Reading

Before you decide.

Michael’s recent writing from the recruiting desk, plus the free starter pack. No obligation to buy anything. The best argument for the report is that the free content is worth more than most services charge for.

Recent Writing · 03

See all posts

Starter Pack · Free

Three best-in-class CV templates. And why they are not enough.

The Harvard, the McKinsey, the banking CV. Curated from the sources hiring managers actually expect. Plus a short note from Michael on what a template cannot do, which is the reason the CV Intelligence Report exists.

  • Three templates, downloadable from authoritative sources
  • A one-page note on when each one works and when it does not
  • Occasional dispatches from Michael's recruiting desk

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Frequently Asked

Questions you might have.

Closing Note · From the Founder

Your CV deserves the same expertise you apply to everything else.

Upload your CV. Within 24 hours, you will know exactly what a recruiter thinks when they read it, what needs to change, and how to fix it. Every report is reviewed and signed off by me before it reaches you.

Michael Muir

Founder · The Other Side

Get Your Report

£49 Launch Pricing · Satisfaction Guarantee · 24hr Delivery

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