The Most Dangerous CV Is The One You Think Is Fine

Amara was not looking for a new job. The new job found her.

A former colleague had moved to a company she had always respected and had sent her a message one Tuesday afternoon. A role had opened up, and it was not advertised yet. Was she interested?

She was very interested.

She dusted off her CV, ran it through an AI tool to freshen it up, made a few edits, and sent it across within the week. She was so excited; the role described exactly who she was.

Two weeks of silence later, she found out through her colleague that they had moved forward with other candidates.

She could not understand it. Her background was exactly what they were looking for. She had been recommended personally by someone already inside the company. Even after having connections, she wasn’t picked, wasn’t she good enough? She started to spiral, doubting her own capabilities and qualifications.

That was when she came to see me.

The Conversation That Changed Things

Amara was a trainer. Corporate training specifically. The kind where you walk into a room full of people who do not want to be there and by the end of the day, something has genuinely shifted. In a one-minute conversation with her, I could tell she was very experienced.

From what she told me, she had designed a customer service training programme for a company that had been struggling with client retention. Within six months of the programme rolling out, their client satisfaction scores had jumped by 28%. I was beyond impressed by those numbers.

Then I read her CV…

Her CV did not reflect any of it. It was too bland to be talking about the person I just talked to. I could see immediately what had happened and why her application had no chance of getting even a second glance from the recruiter.

So, what happened? The AI had done its usual work. It had taken Amara’s career and produced something clean and structured and completely without texture. The kind of CV that looks like it was put together by someone who understood what a CV should look like but had never actually met Amara.

I looked up at her.

“Did you add anything to what the AI gave you?”

“A few words here and there,” she said. “But it looked so good I did not want to change too much.”

That was the problem. It looked good. So, she had left it alone. And in leaving it alone, she had sent a version of herself to a company that had been ready to hire her, a version that gave them no real reason to choose her over anyone else.

And so we rewrote everything, from her stories, from the real experiences and the real effort she put into six years of her life. After that meeting, I had everything she needed, Plain language. Her voice. Nothing borrowed from a template.

Bottomline

If someone handed you an opportunity tomorrow, a referral, a warm introduction, a role that was made for you, would your CV do it justice?

Wouldn’t it look good? Would it actually show the person reading it why you are the right choice?

Click here to get started. Let us make sure your CV is ready for the opportunity when it comes.