Key takeaways
- Recruiters form an initial impression in seconds; your most recent role and job title do most of the work
- Specificity beats superlatives every time — concrete achievements outperform generic claims
- Gaps and career changes are fine; unexplained ones create doubt
- Formatting is about ease of reading, not aesthetics — and ATS compatibility matters more than design
In this article
There's no shortage of CV advice online. Keep it to two pages. Use bullet points. Tailor it for every role. Some of that guidance is useful. A lot of it is repeated so often it's become noise. What's missing is the honest, practical version of what recruiters look for in a CV: what actually gets attention, what makes them stop and read, and what quietly kills your chances before anyone makes a call.
This article is for anyone currently job searching, preparing to move roles, or updating their CV after time away from the market. Here's what we see every day, and what it means for how you should present yourself.
The First 10 Seconds: What Recruiters Actually See
The "10-second scan" is real, and it's not because recruiters are lazy. When you read hundreds of CVs a month, pattern recognition kicks in fast. Within a few seconds of opening a CV, an experienced recruiter has already formed a picture: does this person have the right background, and is it worth reading further?
What catches attention: a job title that matches or closely aligns with the role, a professional summary that says something concrete, and a career history that's easy to scan. Research by Ladders found that recruiters spend an average of 7.4 seconds on initial CV review, with most of that time focused on job titles and dates. That tells you exactly where the effort should go.
What kills the first read: dense blocks of text, a cluttered layout, or a summary that reads like a horoscope — "results-driven professional with a passion for excellence."
Be easy to read. That alone puts you ahead of a significant portion of applications.
Why Your Most Recent Role Carries the Most Weight
Recruiters read CVs roughly in reverse chronological order, but they don't weight every job equally. Your current or most recent position gets the most scrutiny. If it's relevant, strong, and clearly explained, the rest of the CV becomes supporting evidence. If it's vague or hard to follow, earlier experience rarely compensates.
For each role, particularly recent ones, focus on three things: what you were responsible for, what you achieved or delivered, and the scale at which you were working. Numbers help — but only when they're honest and meaningful. "Managed a team of four" is straightforward. "Managed a team of four, reducing average project delivery time by 15%" is considerably more useful to a recruiter briefing a hiring manager.
Specificity Beats Superlatives Every Time
"Strong communicator." "Team player." "Passionate about delivering results." These phrases appear on so many CVs that they've stopped meaning anything to anyone.
What actually stands out is specificity. Not "led cross-functional projects" but "led a product launch across sales, marketing, and operations, delivering two weeks ahead of schedule." Not "improved client retention" but "rebuilt the onboarding process, reducing first-year churn from 30% to 18%."
When you can tell a recruiter what you did, how you did it, and what happened as a result, you're giving them something to remember — and something to brief a hiring manager with. Generic claims don't survive that journey. For a view from the other side of the table, our article on why candidates drop out of hiring processes covers what hiring managers notice when they're evaluating people.
Explaining Gaps and Career Changes
Career gaps are common. People take time out for health, family, redundancy, travel, or further study. Recruiters are not surprised by them. What trips people up is leaving a gap completely unexplained, which forces the reader to fill in the blank — and those assumptions are rarely generous.
A single line is usually sufficient: "Career break: primary carer for a family member, 2022 to 2023." Career changes work the same way. If you've moved between industries or functions, a brief note on why — or a professional summary that addresses it directly — saves the recruiter from constructing a narrative that may not match yours.
The goal is to make the reader's job easy. Any ambiguity in your CV is an ambiguity they will resolve against you.
Formatting: What Actually Matters
A lot of CV formatting advice focuses on aesthetics. The practical reality is simpler: formatting is about making the recruiter's job easy. Clear section headers, consistent font sizes, readable line spacing, and a logical structure (summary, experience, education, skills) are not design choices. They're signals that you've thought about the person reading your document.
Length is a common concern. For most roles, two pages is the right target. Three is acceptable if you have more than 15 years of directly relevant experience. One page works well if you're early in your career. What matters is that every section earns its place. If something doesn't add to the picture, cut it.
How to Get Past the ATS Filter
Many companies, particularly larger ones, run CVs through applicant tracking systems (ATS) before a human ever sees them. These systems scan for keywords, job titles, and relevant experience — and they can struggle with certain formatting choices.
Things that commonly cause ATS problems: tables, text boxes, graphics, headers and footers containing key information, and PDF formats generated from design tools like Canva. A clean, text-based Word document or standard PDF is more reliable when applying through job boards or company portals.
Use the language from the job description where it applies naturally. If a role requires "stakeholder management" and you have that experience, use that specific phrase rather than a synonym. ATS systems look for the terms from the job posting, not equivalents.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long should a CV be?
For most candidates, two pages is the right length. One page works well for those early in their career; three pages is appropriate for senior professionals with more than 15 years of directly relevant experience. The key question is whether each section adds to your case for the role. If it doesn't, cut it.
Should I include a personal statement on my CV?
Yes, but only if it says something specific. A two to four sentence summary that positions you clearly for the type of role you're targeting is useful. A vague statement about being results-driven or passionate about your work adds nothing and should be removed.
How do I explain a career gap on my CV?
A brief, factual note is all that's needed: "Career break: full-time family carer, 2022 to 2023" or "Career break: professional retraining, 2021 to 2022." You don't need to justify it in detail. The goal is simply to remove the ambiguity so the reader doesn't fill in the gap with a less charitable interpretation.
The best CV is not the most creative one, or the most detailed, or the one with the most keywords. It's the one that makes a recruiter think: this person looks right for this role, and I want to find out more. That's the whole goal — not to tell your entire professional story, but to earn the conversation.
If you're not sure whether your CV is doing that job, speak to someone who reads a lot of them. That's what we're here for.
