Pillar 4 of 6
← All NotesTHE MYTHS
The Myths
The conventional wisdom about CVs, applications, and recruiting that turns out to be wrong. Myth-busting grounded in evidence: peer-reviewed studies, ATS reality, recruiter behaviour at scale. The six-second CV, the 75% rejection rate, the keyword-stuffing playbook. All tested. All broken.
In this Pillar
3 pieces
AI CV Builders vs Human CV Review: What Actually Gets You Hired
AI can produce a grammatically perfect CV in thirty seconds. It cannot tell you why a hiring manager would put it in the reject pile. Here is what AI does well, where it fails, and what actually makes the difference.
to generate a CV with AI. About the same to spot one.
Nobody reads your CV in six seconds
The 6-second CV scan comes from a 2012 white paper by a CV-rewriting service, n=30, no peer review. Independent research with better methodology finds recruiters typically spend 17-30 seconds on the initial scan, and several minutes for well-matched senior candidates. Here is where the number came from, what the evidence actually shows, and why the myth persists.
Recruiters who actually spend less than 10 seconds on a CV
The ATS rejection myth: what software actually does to your CV
The claim that 75% of CVs are auto-rejected by software is almost certainly false. Here is what applicant tracking systems actually do, what the best research shows, and why at senior levels it barely matters.
Recruiters whose ATS does not auto-reject anything. The myth, busted.