Your CV Looks Fine. So Why Isn’t It Getting Interviews?

Some of the hardest CVs to improve aren’t terrible.

They’re fine.

No spelling mistakes. Sensible font. Two or three pages. Jobs in reverse chronological order. Nice little profile at the top. Skills section. Everything looks professional.

And absolutely nothing makes me think, “I need to speak to this person.”

That’s the problem.

Professional isn’t the same as persuasive

A lot of CV advice focuses on making sure you don’t do anything wrong.

Don’t use a weird font. Don’t have spelling mistakes. Don’t make it seven pages long. Don’t include a photograph. Don’t use an email address you created when you were 14.

Fine.

But avoiding mistakes doesn’t give me a reason to interview you.

If I’m recruiting for a job and 100 people apply, there might be 40 perfectly respectable CVs in there.

I’m not trying to identify everyone who produced an acceptable document.

I’m trying to decide who I want to speak to.

That’s a much higher bar.

Average CVs can belong to exceptional people

Somebody I used to work with sent me her CV recently.

She’s phenomenal at what she does. I know that because I’ve seen it first-hand, and I’ve heard the same thing from plenty of other people who’ve worked with her.

If somebody asked me whether they should hire her, I’d have no hesitation recommending her.

Then I read her CV.

It was average.

Not bad. Not badly written. Nothing embarrassing.

It just didn’t sound like her.

It told me where she’d worked and what she’d been responsible for, but almost none of the value she’d actually created was there.

If I hadn’t known her already, I’d have had no idea how good she was.

That’s a massive problem because most recruiters reading your CV don’t know you already.

Your responsibilities aren’t your differentiator

Let’s take a Project Manager.

They managed projects. Worked with stakeholders. Controlled budgets. Managed risks. Produced reports. Led meetings. Delivered against timelines.

That’s probably accurate.

It’s also what I’d expect a Project Manager to do.

If I’m comparing that CV with six other Project Managers, listing the basic responsibilities of the job doesn’t help me separate them.

Tell me about the projects.

Tell me how big they were.

Tell me what made them difficult.

Tell me what you fixed.

Tell me what happened as a result.

Give me some evidence that this person wasn’t simply present while project management happened around them.

You don’t need to turn every bullet into a maths equation

This is where CV advice often swings too far in the other direction.

People get told they need metrics, so suddenly every line has a percentage attached to it.

“Improved collaboration by 25%.”

How?

Who measured collaboration?

Was there a collaboration thermometer?

Numbers are brilliant when they’re real and meaningful. Revenue, cost savings, customer numbers, time saved, team size, budgets, delivery times and performance improvements can all provide useful scale.

But impact isn’t only numerical.

Maybe you built something from scratch. Fixed a process everyone hated. Took over a failing project. Became the person senior leaders trusted with the difficult work. Introduced a new system. Helped a team through a major change.

Tell me that.

Your CV might be describing the wrong version of you

Careers change.

You become more senior. Your responsibilities grow. You develop a specialism. You move towards leadership. You start doing work that wasn’t originally part of your job.

CVs don’t always keep up.

Sometimes somebody has spent five years updating their CV by adding the latest job at the top while leaving everything else broadly untouched.

Eventually you end up with a document that technically records your career but doesn’t really tell the story of who you are now.

If you’re targeting senior roles, does your CV show senior-level impact?

If you’re trying to move into management, does it show leadership?

If you’re changing direction, have you brought the transferable evidence forwards?

Your CV isn’t an archive.

It has a job to do now.

“Fine” becomes more of a problem when competition increases

If an employer is desperate to hire and gets three applications, a fine CV might be enough.

If they get 250 applications, it probably isn’t.

This doesn’t mean you need a gimmicky design, a personal logo or a photograph of yourself leaning against a wall with your arms folded.

You need stronger evidence.

The more choice an employer has, the more important it becomes to make the reasons to choose you obvious.

That’s why I wouldn’t spend hours making your CV prettier when the substance isn’t strong enough.

The question I’d ask instead

Don’t ask:

“Does my CV look good?”

Ask:

“If somebody knew nothing about me except what is written here, would they understand why I’m good at what I do?”

Those are very different questions.

You might be brilliant.

Your CV might be perfectly fine.

And both of those things can be true while the document still doesn’t give somebody enough reason to interview you.

If you’re getting very little response from applications, this is also where I’d look at the wider conversion problem in your job search before changing everything at once.

And if you want to see how your current CV stacks up without trying to judge it yourself, run it through my Free CV Score.

Because “fine” isn’t really what we’re aiming for.

Score your CV free and see where it could be stronger.