Is the CV dead and buried?

Polina Montano is Co-Founder and COO at JOB TODAY, the UK’s #1 hiring app. JOB TODAY helps employers in the service industries find great staff quickly.

The CV is becoming an endangered species and some day may even become extinct, and not before time, say some employers. Employers don’t give a monkey’s if you’ve conquered Kilimanjaro or care for orphaned bats in your spare time. What they want to know is will you fit the culture? Can you do the job? Do you have good soft skills? CVs have become such an X-Factor beauty contest that they’ve almost made themselves irrelevant.

The tradition of CV-based recruitment is being dismantled by all kinds of employers, who are now not interested in CV stock favourites like degree or A levels. Accounting firm giant Ernst and Young scrapped their requirements for a 2.1 degree, opening up opportunities for a more diverse pool of talent, because their in-house recruitment centre was good enough to recruit the people who would succeed. The “CV blind” approach to recruitment is taken by many firms, big and small, like law stalwarts Macfarlanes and Clifford Chance.

CVs have always had their problems. Even when they are beautifully written and present a compelling view of the applicant (and are squeaky-clean true), unconscious bias will always be a problem. You’re not human if you’re not swayed by details that mean a lot to you subconsciously but don’t support bias-free recruitment. So, they’re a Man U supporter but you support City? Ten to one you might feel something subconsciously about that. And it can be soul destroying to sift through dozens of CVs for one job, only to find that there’s no-one suitable. Or perhaps there are some real gems in that pile of CVs, people who can take your business places, but you’ve not identified them because they just haven’t presented themselves well.