How Long Have You Been Sending The Wrong Version Of Yourself

Njeri had applied for the same level of role three times in two years and had not made it past the first round in any of them. She was not bothered by rejection; she had thick skin, but three times at the same wall started to feel like the wall was trying to tell you something.

She came to me not because she was desperate but because she was curious. What was the wall?

I found it in the first paragraph of her CV.

She had used AI to write it, which I could tell not because it was badly written but because it was written for nobody in particular. Every sentence was correct, and none of them meant anything.

She had five years in customer experience, had rebuilt a feedback system that cut response time from nine days to two, and had trained a team that hit their satisfaction targets for six consecutive months after missing them for a year.

While her credentials and achievements make her a very great candidate, her CV describes her as a customer-focused professional with a passion for delivering exceptional service.

Passion. Exceptional. Two words that have appeared on so many CVs that they have stopped carrying any weight at all when a recruiter sees them.

 We sat down and rewrote it

We spent an afternoon pulling the real version out. The nine days to two days. The six consecutive months. The year of missed targets that preceded them, and what she had done differently. By the time we finished, it read like someone who actually understood the work rather than someone describing it from a safe distance.

She got through the first round the next time. Then the second. Then, finally, an offer after all the frustrations.

The wall was never the rejection. It was one document that had been representing her badly for two years without either of them knowing it.

Bottomline                                                                

If your CV has not been translating your expertise in recruiters’ rooms, like Njeri, the problem is probably not your qualifications and skills.

It is what is on the page before you ever get there. We write CVs that tell the true version of your career, not the tidy AI version. Click here to get started and get the best version of you to represent you out there.