Principles of a good CV (redux)

Greg Wyatt • September 18, 2024

I have a bit of a lurgy this week, and have little headspace for writing.

So I hope you’ll forgive this reminder article, especially if you’ve only recently subscribed:

“*If all you need is a CV template - have a look at this one from Lee Harding. Were I to receive one in this format, that would tick the boxes.*

“Ask 9 people for advice on your CV and you’ll end up with 10 CVs.”

A pithy truth that shows how subjective a CV is.

While also highlighting how frustrating it can be to spend time or even money on perfecting a document that the next person rips to shreds.

But in this comes an important truth.

That the only person whose opinion matters in a hiring process is the reader whose finger is on the Reject button.

Stay to the end for my thoughts on customising your CV.

In today’s Jobseeker Basics we’ll look at the principles of an effective CV.

Not a perfect CV, because perfection is wholly subjective and the path of madness in a difficult job search.

These principles are based on advice I give to jobseekers when they ask for feedback.

Principles that come from my own insight, backed up by effective processes from a seemingly different industry.

First we start with what a CV is and what a CV means.

Did you know the first recognised CV was written by Leonardo DaVinci in a letter highlighting his candidacy for employment? Yes a CV and cover letter in one!

I’m pleased to say he got the job off his first application.

However, the notion of a document that presents candidacy dates back millennia with gladiators highlighting their achievements through the Lanista system. This was done to increase their reputation so that owners could earn more money.

A form of marketing document based on provable facts that synthesised their gladiatorial career in written format - a stone slab.

In a sense nothing has changed - your CV is a marketing document, which you use to highlight your candidacy so that your buyers (employers - as they are on a buyer’s journey) invest in their time to offer you an interview.

Now, I do read a lot of debate on what a CV actually is, and whether it is more of a technical document than a marketing one.

However, that’s a disservice to true marketing, which always has a basis in fact.

Your CV is there to highlight your candidacy, and to give your experience meaning to the reader so that they can make a positive decision on you.

It’s there to get you an interview, and for its readers to take you to the next stage.

Typically a hiring process has several moving parts, each a decision-maker in their own right.

From an administrator who sifts CVs, to recruiters/talent acquisition processes that make a longlist, to hiring managers and their bosses - each has their say on whether or not you might make the cut.

I’m sorry to say sometimes it is arbitrary:

“If they’re this unlucky why would we hire them?” said the hiring manager to the administrator after binning one of the two piles of CVs at random.

While their decisions aren’t in your control, your words and how they are presented are.

So it makes sense to create a document that helps the weakest link in the chain see you as a candidate of choice, while also supporting other decision-makers, presuming they run the game fairly.

To summarise the above - your CV is a marketing document whose priority is the reader.

Because it’s a marketing document, it’s one you can use to market yourself outside of applying for a job. Such as through networking or doorknocking.

Its functionality outside of applying for a job is why it should be a document for life. It’s so multi-faceted, that you can use it in many arenas; more so than a LinkedIn profile, video or other, which have more specific purpose.

This means that the principles of a good CV are the principles of a good marketing document.

A good marketing document at its core creates action - the decision to move forward.

It goes to follow, the principles of a good marketing document also apply the principles of a good advert.

The same things we see, listen to and experience encourage us to take action to buy (let’s not forget that the employer is the buyer when it comes to the process that leads to an offer, although you too are a buyer in your decision to proceed).

I’m sure you have read much hoo-ha on what makes a good CV in the Talent Acquisition, recruitment, career coaching, and job seeker spaces, much of it is contradictory (mainly in line with that quote at the top), while some of it is cynical.

Instead of joining in that conversation, let’s look to another industry that uses words to convert action, as a basis for the principles of a good CV.

Whose principles are based on understanding how its users work, and influence their actions to improve the odds of a purchase.

E-commerce.

A multi-trillion industry built on the words you read, marketing and advertising.

While it may not directly relate to recruitment or looking for work, its principles do:

Readability
Accessibility
AIDA (attention interest desire action; a century-old advertising formula that applies response-stimuli psychology)
Features (what it does; skills, tools, experience in a CV) and benefits (how it helps; achievements)
SEO (keywords to be found) on the Google principles of Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness
Conversion rate optimisation (CRO; arguments to convert)

Job boards and LinkedIn employ many principles of E-commerce in their functionality, so it’s not as far removed as you might think.

Those are the principles. What about assumptions and myths?

ATS compliance
7-second CV scan
CVs must be 1/2/3/367 pages long
Anything people often talk about

These seem big deals, but they’re not, for a simple reason.

If you write your CV for a reader, in a way that grabs their attention, while following basic rules, you’ll get past these seeming traps.

Let’s touch on the top three briefly.

To be ATS compliant, at worst, you need to avoid tables, columns and images. I say at worst because modern ATSs don’t struggle with these so much. You can read this article for more on the ATS monster, and why it isn’t as relevant as you fear.
It’s true that in a volume process, the initial scan may be quick, but if you pass the scan your CV will be read in more depth because you move from elimination to selection. We’ll look more at this next with AIDA.
Your CV should be… okay this gets its own section:

Everyone has their own opinion on what the length of a CV should be.

The only person who matters in a hiring process is the reader, if they have a strong opinion you can find out.

If you can find out their specific requirement is for what makes a good CV, and you are prepared to play to their whim - give them that.

If not, your CV should tell its story in a way that grabs attention and holds it. Accessibility, readability… those bullet points above.

White space is your friend.
Tautology (unnecessary repetition) is not.
Conciseness is your friend.
Ambiguity is not.
Achievements that show context are your friend.
Adjectives are not (strip an adjective out and does your CV lose meaning? If not why are you relying on them?)
So What? is your friend. If you can’t answer that of your statements, your statements need improving.
Show specific and relevant information and don’t bore your audience with things they don’t care about.

Grab your reader’s attention in the first half page, so that they read the rest. If they don’t read past that first half page, it doesn’t really matter how well written the rest of your document is.

Get these points right, and a good enough CV will likely be 800 to 1200 words long across 2 to 3 (even 4) pages.

Okay now on to actionable steps.

Accessibility and readability

Can someone who doesn’t know your domain see what you do from your CV?

If they can’t there’s a problem, especially if they are the weakest link in the chain.

A good litmus test is to ask a friend you trust to see what they can tell you about you from your CV. What do they think your biggest achievements are?

White space is your friend - would you read a condensed document or one that is clearly laid out? Don’t worry about spreading your CV onto a third, or even fourth page, if your experience demands it.

AIDA

The classic advertising framework, and how animals, in general, make decisions (look, check, am I hungry/scared/aroused, act). Look to your puppy for confirmation.

In a 7-second CV scan, you grab Attention on the first page, with the most relevant information: your job title, key skills and tools that show how you meet essential requirements, and generally what the vacancy is looking for.

Get past this first test and gain their Interest through a clearly laid out document that shows the passage of your career (reverse chronological order, show company and role context).

Build Desire by showing your specific achievements that support your candidacy for the role you want. These are the problems you solve and show how you can help your next employer best.

Enable Action by providing clear and accurate means of contacting you - this may seem obvious yet some forget to do so.

- - -

A note on Context .

Context is the gaps in your CV that answer the questions your readers should have.

What does your employer do? How many employees? What size revenue? What was the structure of the team in which you delivered your achievement?

If your reader has to ask a question about your CV, your CV should provide the answer.

Context is what most CVs miss, and it lets them down.

One way to show context, is to use the interview framework STAR (Situation Task Action Result) - this frames information in a way that has meaning to your audience.

- - -

Features and Benefits

These are the basics of selling.

You don’t buy the technical specifications of a TV; you buy what the TV does for you.

You don’t buy the ingredients of a Pizza, you buy the taste, sensation and experience it provides.

Both are important of course.

But most of your readers know broadly what a <job title> does - there’s no need to say it if the meaning is implicit.

What we want to know is how it helps.

For example.

An administrator may do administration, but how does it help?

Do they arrange travel cost efficiently, take away the admin burden from the directors, save time?

Those are the benefits, even better in the form of achievements.

SEO primarily relates to keywords. Think about how you search on Google for whatever it is you search on. We do much the same when scanning and searching on CVs.

Are the keywords from the job description or advert you are applying to clearly stated on your CV?

These are typically the essential requirements and this is a rare piece of ALWAYS advice. Always show how you meet the essential requirements.

But also rely on EEAT in that list above. Show these keywords, but not in a way that makes you look cynical or careless.

Some career coaches advise a ‘white text keyword bomb’ as a hack - but if a reader thinks you’ve employed a hack, you may be seen to be cheating, and that rarely goes well.

If your CV has the right keywords, it will be easier to find on CV Databases.

You can use the same keywords to make it easier to be found on LinkedIn.

Which are two ways to access ‘ hidden jobs ’.

Ultimately, the only point of a CV is to prompt action, the second A in AIDA.

The crux of a CV is to show the reader how you can solve their problems.

The problems that are at the heart of their vacancy.

Do this in a compelling way, and you’ll improve your odds.

CRO is built on psychology through and through and understanding how your readers make decisions.

Here’s an example that shows how readability and psychology come together:

«image description: the mysteries of reader psychology… for most people»

Think about the flow and readability of your CV - this is how websites work.

Everything in a well-designed website is intentional. Is your CV?

I find CRO fascinating - worth a read if you want to go down a rabbit hole.

A note on customising your CV.

It’s common advice that you should customise your CV.

But here’s a nuance.

If you accept there is no such thing as an objectively perfect CV, then ‘good enough’ should be your goal.

A CV that presents your candidacy to the principles above is good enough, especially if it represents the best version of you for the role you are most suited for.

This ‘good enough’ CV should be the basis of applications.

When tailoring your CV to show how you meet essential requirements, this shouldn’t take more than a few minutes - it’s a basic task.

If you’re spending hours tailoring CVs for every application, this is time that should be better spent elsewhere.

Of course, there will be occasions when you have to customise to a specific set of demands, in which case it’s your choice whether you invest the time to do so intentionally.

If you present a good enough CV with minor adjustments, instead of a heavily customised document, the difference in outcome is negligible in most situations.

Use the time you save in not overly tailoring to better effect. It’s a good way not to burn out.

CVs are important, but many people place too much importance on their place in the process.

A good enough CV is your best step forward. If you are a no anyway, perhaps it wasn’t meant to be.

Or maybe the decision was already made if you are in a demographic the reader chooses to discriminate against.

That may not even be for illegal reasons, if they decide you live too far away, are too expensive, or that you love Agile when they love Waterfall.

Go for good enough - it’s a challenge to get there, but once you do, you can build on it for life, and it might just help you get a job now too.

Thanks for reading.

Regards,

Greg”

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An inverted job search

By Greg Wyatt • October 7, 2026

I realise I've shared this chapter fairly recently, but there's good reason to revisit it. On Friday, I launched a new AI tool - Your Job Search Plan. You can find it here: https://your-jobsearch-plan.netlify.app/ It's based on the inversion principle below: the optimal job search is an inversion of how that job is optimally recruited. In other words, the first step in a job search should be to understand how recruiters and hiring processes seek to fill your ideal vacancy. Then to access all those channels while putting your best foot forward. It connects your applications, your networking, your CV, your LinkedIn profile, and so on, all of which should stem from your professional identity, the context of your career, the market conditions for that career, and therefore the work you'll need to do to boost your odds. One thing I'm pleased about with this tool is how it relates to the other tools and resources on www.bwrecruitment.co.uk/resources . So what seemed abstract, or painful activities without guaranteed outcome, become a practical arrow in the quiver of your search. I hope you find these tools helpful. They are a starting point, rather than a resolution. 20 - An inverted job search So, your broad approach to looking for a job is based on a product marketing strategy. How does this link to your job search and how companies hire? The next step is to recognise a job search is an inverted recruitment process. Whatever you can learn about the actual workings of recruitment, the better armed you are to navigate them. The first way in which this is true is around the routes to market employers take to fill a job. Employers want to fill vacancies in the most economical and efficient means possible. Sometimes they’ll rely on external advice, sometimes they’ll figure out their own way, and sometimes they’ll employ people to do it for them (such as a Talent Acquisition Manager or internal recruiter). When they rely on external advice, it may not surprise you it’s as varied and contradictory as job seeker advice. Take this nugget of wisdom: 80% of suitable candidates are not actively looking for work. By advertising, you’ll only have access to the 20% that applies to adverts. Hang on a minute! Doesn’t that sound an awful lot like the hidden jobs market? Of course, candidates aren’t hidden - much like hidden jobs, the priority is to understand the channels through which candidates are found. These channels directly mirror the channels through which you look for that job: Job boards; LinkedIn; Recruitment agencies; Confidential headhunting; Internal promotions; Secondments; Temp-to-perm hires; Consulting-to-perm hires; Referrals; Networking; Speculative approaches; Careers pages; Talent pools; Candidate databases Every job is different, dictated by principles like supply and demand, confidentiality, reputational risk, wherewithal, budget and capacity. The hiring process of a Software Developer is different from that of a Sales Director. If an employer only hires through an advert - this means if you don’t apply for adverts, there’s no way in which you can be considered for that vacancy. A second way it’s accurate is the notion that what’s true for one may not be true for others. This relates to candidate resentment . You may read online that some recruitment behaviours are signs of a bad employer. Yet, you should always follow the instructions given when applying for an advert or through an agency. They may instruct you to: 1/ Write a CV, cover letter and duplicate it on their ATS 2/ Tell them your salary when they don’t list theirs 3/ Do 17 interviews before reaching a decision 4/ Deliver a 6-month strategy plan by presentation 5/ Or any other request deemed unreasonable by Career Coaches, Job seekers, or people otherwise uninvolved in that process What some consider red flags, others will deem acceptable practice. It becomes your choice to play the game or not. Either follow their instructions or step away. You don’t have to apply if you don’t want to. In a similar vein, if you hear a hiring process has a preference, or if there are gaps in their employment armoury - these might be biases you can lean into. The hiring manager loves Arsenal Football Club and is biased towards people who love the same? Now might be the time to switch allegiance, if you can fake it or make it. They love a one page CV? Apply with a one page CV. You know the hiring manager of an advert with 400 applications? Give them a call - they might give you an unfair advantage. Poor practice from the employer, yet these are problems you can turn into opportunity. A third way in which this is true is by comparing inbound and outbound activity Outbound activity is where you go to your prospect (phone calls, messaging). Inbound activity is where the prospect comes to you (job adverts, content). Yet an outbound activity for a recruiter is an inbound activity for you (you receive phone calls and messages). While an inbound activity has you getting in touch because of their advert or content. When we talk about optimising your work, whether your CV, profile or interviews, it has to give the process what it needs. How can you be more discoverable, so you receive more relevant calls and messages? How can you improve your return on applications and your outbound messages? What about inverse non-recruitment? A brilliant, if strange question, with the same answer. When networking, going direct, seeking to become a referral, doorknocking, or other, what is the inverse of that activity? How does that person find or recommend people, if they become aware of a vacancy? How might they see you as a person to solve their problems, even if it isn’t a vacancy? You do these activities because of how they might help you and because of the benefit the other party experiences. What’s in it for them? If there isn’t anything in it for them, why should they help you? For each and every stage in recruitment, there is an opposed force, as candidates and the hiring process meet each other. It’s rarely an equal force, because every vacancy has supply and demand, resource, skill level, biases and intent at play. This is why each type of role has a different method of looking for work. Executive vacancies typically prioritise headhunted candidates, with fewer public adverts. Here the priority shifts towards building relationships with, and being discoverable by, Executive Search recruiters. If executives rely mainly on job boards, they may never think to focus on more suited channels. If you can learn what the other needs for that process to be successful, you can deliver the same. Speak to peers, speak to hiring managers you know, speak to recruiters, speak to former job seekers. How have they found work, and how would they recruit for your roles? Research your market to find viable employers, to identify recruiters and to build your network. Then execute an appropriate strategy to access these channels.

Hierarchy of Pain

By Greg Wyatt • September 23, 2026

I had an aborted conversation at a networking event on Tuesday. It was about a problem vacancy a fractional people lead was looking at. Her client had instructed various executive search firms and none had produced a viable candidate. It seems the consistent approach was to match CVs to job description - pureplay transactional - and none were candidates that met the goal of the vacancy. You see that organisational pain that the vacancy heals wasn't defined by documentation, and therefore if you rely on that documentation to find candidates, it's happenstance that you come across someone viable. It's such a common problem, and when I 'fix' problem vacancies, it's invariably something that isn't described which was holding back a successful hire. The irony is this shouldn't be a hidden pain - presuming it's appropriate to share, it should be front and centre. What complicates modern recruitment is that, instead of better specifying vacancies, both sides of the hiring fence increasingly rely on LLMs to produce documentation that shaves the edges off. And as a result a candidate that has extensively healed the hidden pain a vacancy might even remove the evidence from their application in a bit to better match an advert or job description. The more transactional recruitment comes, particularly through reliance on technology, the worse this problem becomes. Probably not an issue for business as usual vacancy, but when a vacancy has impact, standard process of "5 CVs by Friday" will invariably hold you back. The chapter below is from A Career Breakdown Kit , my guide for navigating a skewiff employment market. It may be for job seekers, but the problem and solution are directly mirrored by the hiring side. It's taken word for word from the book, so some of the content is interconnected with other chapters. You can read most of them for free in the Jobseeker Basics newsletter. Hierarchy of pain This chapter reflects on how buyers make decisions, how this is reflected in hiring and why it matters in how you put forward your CV, application, interviews and other messages. If you’ve ever encountered sales in your career or life you are likely familiar with the concepts of Features and Benefits. The product is what is proposed. Features are what it does. Benefits are how it helps. However there are actually three other components in this hierarchy that make up commercial messaging. Value is what the benefits mean to you. “Sell the sizzle, not the sausage” - the sizzle isn’t a benefit, if you don’t like sausages. Outcomes are the tangible long-term results from using that product or service. “Sell the picture frame, not the screwdriver” - or rather what’s in the frame. Why does it matter? The idea being these peel back the layers of the onion to help a potential customer understand exactly What’s In It For Them. Yet, it may not matter whatsoever if your brilliantly put together message doesn’t achieve one element - show how you heal their hidden pain. In that frame example above, this might be a photo of a loved one, no longer with us. The photo is for our memories and feelings. The frame has to be right, to commemorate them properly. While it needs to be mounted well, using tools that make the job easier. Could you market that loss to sell a screwdriver? Hopefully not, though the message might be, “For memories that matter,” instead of "High Quality Screwdriver". It's a common pain many share, yet not one you might discuss down the DIY shop. Early in my career I had a lesson on hidden pain and its importance. I recruited an HR Manager for a high growth business whose requirement was for someone with broad experience in a similar environment. I presented an excellent candidate who was only available due to the shutdown of her employer - she had to stay to the final day to manage the process well, which limited her availability to start work. That was the only reason I explained her current situation to this new employer, because redundancy management wasn’t on the job description. She got the job! On day one of her new employment, her role was made redundant and she was offered a retention bonus to shut down the local site - everyone was to lose their jobs. The hidden pain here was redundancy, something not even mentioned to me during the vacancy briefing, and something I never broached with Julie. IIRC, there was no mention of it during the interview process either. Perhaps that’s an extreme example, but it does show what can happen behind the scenes. And if you happened to be out of work, a fixed term contract with a retention bonus might be quite appealing. Were you to apply to that vacancy, it would be important to highlight your redundancy experience - customising your CV might even have worked against you! So how does this hierarchy fit within your job search? You are the product, with your next employer on a buyer’s journey. Your features are what you offer. In a CV this is a combination of job titles, qualifications, skills and areas of experience. It’s also your salary requirement, where you are based and other elements like Visa status and working arrangements. Get these right and a little luck might mean they are all you need, considering that these same elements are what we source and filter on. I expect in this market you’re in competition with many people that offer the same Features, so the differentiator is what you bring to the table uniquely. The contexts of your career combined with how you helped, your impact, your achievements, and what the outcomes were. Related chapters: Principles of a Good CV Should I customise my CV? LinkedIn profiles that get found LinkedIn profiles that convert These are all resources that will help you communicate the benefits of your experience, the value you bring, the problems you solve, and the outcomes of these solutions. As for the hidden pain question, which in many vacancies isn’t articulated, how can you unpick hidden? Go back to why vacancies are recruited. How did they come about in the first place? They only fit into two piles - new and replacement. However these two piles have many subcategories relating to the problems they solve and the pain they heal. Researching the company can help. Inside knowledge definitely helps - it’s one reason good agency recruiters will be a valuable ally. But this knowledge isn’t always available, and sometimes the employer may not even know! I always come back to the principle, “You can’t be all things to all people.” And when you try to do this, you appeal to no one. It’s one reason why using LLM style AI to customise CVs is so problematic. The output is necessarily same-same because it’s a probabilistic determination of what you want based on an aggregate of data. It’s why, when recruiters receive a volume of AI augmented CVs, they all look the same. Your ‘good enough’ core CV ( Should I customise my CV ) leans into your strengths. While you might tweak it to meet the essential requirements, in the language of the employer, this should naturally support your greatest strength - the unique fingerprint that is your career. The downside of relying on customisation against vague, and often misrepresentative, adverts is that you can deemphasise and even remove your biggest achievements. The same achievements that would have helped you stand out. If your application doesn’t heal the hidden pain of a vacancy, it’s either because you have not defined your strengths correctly or you aren’t that close of a fit with the actual needs of the vacancy. An example to show this pitfall in practice. I caught up with a friend yesterday who has resigned from a post that was missold to him. His career is based on commercial acumen and enablement in a field that is heavily focused on risk management and compliance. So he’s already unusual in a good way (though his CV didn’t show this). On day one of his new job, he encountered a literal unexpected disaster. While these things happen, and he managed the situation effectively, this proved a consequence of the business culture and strategy. These problems kept coming up and his functional area in the business needed a complete overhaul at executive level. Rather than the commercial enablement picture they painted, they needed someone who relished chaos - a master of disaster. Completely the opposite of the career Simon wants. This isn’t something they could publicise in their recruitment process, for reputational reasons, yet it was a fundamental baked-in aspect of the role. I’ve no doubt Simon’s CV is a match for their job description. Yet he is not a match for their job. What if they’d seen CVs of people who’d leant into strengths of healing dysfunction? What if he’d leant into his strength of enablement? He may not have left his previous job for something he went on to regret. If you’re sceptical about how crucial hidden pain is in recruitment, think about your own hidden pain when applying for jobs. What’s going on in your life that impacts which roles are ideal for you. The same points you might not divulge when you’re just trying to get back into employment. Perhaps you've even experienced the pain I did when considering a hardware purchase. How did that pain inform your buying decisions? It’s no different for employers when they consider the pain and problems inherent in their vacancy.