A recruiter does not read your CV. They scan it.
On that first pass, they are not looking for keywords. They are not checking whether you have the right number of years. They are asking one question: can I place this person in my mental model of the market?
That question has nothing to do with formatting, font choices, or whether your CV is one page or two. It has everything to do with positioning.
What positioning actually means
Most people write their CV as a history of what they have done. A chronological record, starting with the most recent role and working backwards. It answers the question: what is my career so far?
That is the wrong question.
The question a recruiter needs answered is: what is this person for? Not where have they been, but given where they have been, what are they the obvious choice for next?
Those are not the same question. One is a history lesson. The other is a positioning statement. The difference between the two is the difference between being considered and being overlooked.
The 7-second scan in practice
When a recruiter opens your CV, their eyes go to three places in roughly this order:
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Your current or most recent job title and company. This tells them what level you are at and what kind of organisation you work in. It is the fastest way to position you.
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Your professional summary. If it exists and if it is specific enough to tell them something they did not already know from the job title. Most summaries fail here because they are generic. "Experienced finance professional with a track record of delivering results" could belong to anyone.
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The shape of your career. Not the detail, the shape. How many roles, how long in each, whether the trajectory makes sense. A recruiter can read career momentum in seconds.
If those three things align and tell a coherent story, you get a proper read. If they do not, you go into the maybe pile. The maybe pile is functionally the no pile.
Why most CVs fail this test
The most common problem is not bad writing. It is unclear positioning. The CV does not answer the question fast enough.
This usually happens for one of three reasons:
The summary is generic. It describes a type of person rather than a specific professional. Recruiters read hundreds of these. If yours could belong to anyone in your industry, it is not doing its job.
The experience section lists responsibilities, not achievements. "Managed a team of 12" tells a recruiter what you were asked to do. "Built and led a 12-person team that delivered a new reporting framework across three business units in 9 months" tells them what you are capable of. The difference matters.
The structure does not respect the scan. The most important information is not in the most visible position. The CV is ordered chronologically by default rather than strategically by design.
What a recruiter would change
If a recruiter sat down with your CV and rebuilt it, they would start with one question: what do I want the reader to conclude about this person on the first pass?
Everything follows from that. The summary gets rewritten to answer the positioning question directly. The experience section gets restructured so that the most relevant achievements are the most visible. The career narrative gets shaped so that each phase leads logically to the next.
The result is a CV that does not just describe your career. It makes the case for what you should do next.
Your CV is the one document that speaks for you when you are not in the room. It deserves the same expertise you apply to everything else.
That is what the CV Intelligence Report is built to do. Not just flag what is wrong, but show you exactly how a recruiter reads your career and rebuild the document around that understanding.
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Michael Muir
Founder · The Other Side
Twenty years placing candidates across high-calibre boutiques through to FTSE 100 companies. Thousands of CVs a year. Writes “Notes from the Desk” on how hiring decisions actually get made.
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