CV review for the people who haven't applied yet.
There's a client I worked with last winter who'd been re-reading her own CV for six months without sending it anywhere. As it happens, the document was broadly fine; what was holding her back was a structural choice she'd made some years earlier that no longer matched the work she now wanted to apply for. The thing about CV review is that the issue is usually structural, not cosmetic.
Who this work is for.
You have a CV. You haven't been sending it. You're not actively in interview pipelines yet. The reason you haven't applied is that something about the document doesn't yet match what you'd want a hiring manager to read. Maybe it's the opening summary that feels like someone else's voice. Maybe it's the way the last role is described: accurate but, on the page, smaller than it actually was. Maybe it's a structural decision from years ago that turned out to suit a job search you're no longer doing.
Over the years I've noticed a particular pattern with mid-career CVs that have been edited many times rather than re-thought once. Every individual edit is reasonable; the cumulative effect is that the document is a record of what got added rather than a clear statement of what's there now. The work in CV review is usually closer to taking the document apart and reassembling it deliberately than to rewriting individual lines.
What CV-review work covers.
- A structural read of the document as it stands. what is on each page and why, where the document is making the right argument and where it isn't. Not a line-edit; a read.
- A clear statement of the role-family the CV is currently positioned for, and whether that matches the role-family you'd actually like to apply for. Mismatches are common and not always obvious.
- Section-by-section rewriting where structure is wrong: the summary, the experience block, the qualifications block, the things-I'm-currently-doing block at the end if you have one.
- A specific decision about the awkward bits. the gap year, the eighteen-month role that didn't go well, the lateral move that doesn't read as a promotion. Most CV review work is, looking back, about how to frame the parts you'd rather not have to frame at all.
- A version that you can defend in interview. If you can't talk through every line of the CV in your own voice, the CV isn't yet finished. We test for that out loud in the second session.
How the work runs in practice.
- You send the current CV ahead of session one. No covering note necessary; a paragraph about which roles you're considering is useful but not required.
- Session one: read together, slowly. Sixty minutes, on the document. I take notes; you talk through specific lines. We agree what is staying, what is being rewritten, what is being cut, and what is missing.
- Between sessions you redraft. Most clients return with a noticeably different document; some return with a smaller set of edits. Both are fine.
- Session two: read aloud and stress-test. Sixty minutes. We read through every claim and ask the interview-style follow-up question to it. The lines that you can't easily defend get rewritten or cut on the spot.
- You leave with two saved versions: the new working CV, and the version-before-rewrite as an audit trail. Most clients are sending applications within a fortnight.
What clients ask before booking CV review.
Do you write the CV for me, or do I bring one?
You bring one. The work I do is review and structural rewriting of an existing CV, not writing from a blank page. In my experience, fresh-from-blank CVs read like they were written by someone other than you, which causes problems when an interviewer asks you to elaborate on a bullet you don't actually remember writing.
How many sessions does CV work usually take?
One or two sessions for most clients. Single sessions are for people who broadly trust their CV and want a sharp second opinion. Two-session packages are for people whose CV needs structural work: what to include, what to cut, how to frame a non-linear history. A six-session programme is overkill for CV work alone; it makes more sense if interview and profile work are also in scope.
Will my CV pass automated screening systems?
It will be in plain text-extractable format, with conventional section headings, no graphics behind the body text, no two-column layout that breaks parsing. That covers the screening question to a reasonable standard. I don't claim to game any specific system; those guarantees age badly.
Format and pricing.
Every engagement is online or in person in Birmingham. There is no half-day workshop, no group programme, no upsell.