Reading Between the Lines: What Does a CV Really Tell You?
There was a time when a CV was relatively simple.
Where have you worked?
What have you done?
What qualifications do you have?
Today, CVs feel very different. They are polished. Carefully curated. Optimised for applicant tracking systems. Supported by LinkedIn profiles, personal brands and impressive job titles.
Yet I'm not convinced they've become any better at telling us who someone really is.
Whenever I recruit, or simply look through someone's career history, I find myself asking a very different question.
Not just where have they been?
But...
How long did they stay?
Length of service has become one of the most interesting parts of a CV.
Not because staying somewhere for ten years automatically makes someone good. Nor does moving every year automatically make someone poor.
But every career leaves clues.
Some people spend ten years in one organisation, building trust, overcoming setbacks, seeing projects through from beginning to end and leaving something stronger than they found it.
Others seem to arrive, write a strategy, launch a programme, update the organisational chart and disappear before anyone really knows whether it worked.
Neither is automatically right or wrong.
But they are different stories.
As recruiters, are we curious enough to ask why?
Perhaps they left because they were exceptional and were promoted.
Perhaps they outgrew the role.
Perhaps the organisation changed direction.
Perhaps they had a difficult manager.
Or perhaps they simply became bored.
Equally, perhaps they struggled to build relationships, found challenge uncomfortable or left before accountability caught up with them.
The CV rarely tells you.
The interview should.
High-performance sport offers an interesting parallel.
Imagine covering a few coaching sessions for an Olympic athlete while their regular coach is away.
Technically, you've coached an Olympic athlete.
But have you really?
Did you influence their long-term development?
Did you shape their preparation?
Did you navigate injury, confidence, selection disappointments and performance pressure?
Or did you simply deliver three excellent sessions?
There is a significant difference between delivering sessions and coaching someone over time.
The same distinction exists throughout leadership.
Writing a strategy isn't the same as implementing it.
Launching a culture isn't the same as sustaining it.
Starting change isn't the same as living with its consequences.
Sometimes the most important work happens after the launch event.
Years ago, someone gave me career advice that has stayed with me.
"Chris," they said, "you're too honest."
"You need to bend the truth a little."
"Everyone does."
The suggestion wasn't to tell outright lies.
It was to elevate achievements, stretch involvement and allow assumptions to fill the gaps.
Apparently that's just how careers work.
I remember feeling deeply uncomfortable.
Not because I wanted to undersell myself.
But because I wondered what happens if everybody starts doing it.
Where does confidence finish and exaggeration begin?
At what point does marketing become fiction?
Sadly, I suspect we've normalised it.
I've noticed something else over the years.
Sometimes people quietly remove parts of their career altogether.
A role lasting eight months disappears.
A difficult year never existed.
An organisation vanishes from both the CV and LinkedIn profile.
Perhaps there was a perfectly reasonable explanation.
Perhaps redundancy.
Perhaps restructuring.
Perhaps caring responsibilities.
Perhaps self-employment.
But why erase it?
Why are we becoming uncomfortable with careers that contain detours?
The reality is that very few careers are perfectly linear.
Mine certainly hasn't been.
Like many people, I've spent periods working independently.
Some would call it self-employment.
Others might describe parts of it as unemployment.
The labels almost don't matter.
Those periods involved learning, consulting, writing, reflecting, building relationships and developing ideas that now shape how I coach and lead.
Yet there's often an unspoken pressure to hide those moments because they don't fit the traditional career narrative.
As if every month needs an impressive job title attached to it.
Perhaps the biggest question isn't about length of service at all.
Perhaps it's about contribution.
When you left, what remained?
Did people trust you?
Did the culture improve?
Did others become better because you were there?
Would they hire you again?
These questions rarely appear on a CV.
Yet they're probably the questions that matter most.
I'm increasingly convinced that recruiters should spend less time admiring impressive job titles and more time exploring career patterns.
Not to judge them.
To understand them.
Why did you move?
What did you finish?
What did you leave behind?
What became difficult?
What did you learn?
Those answers reveal far more than another polished bullet point.
Perhaps that's the challenge for all of us.
Not simply to build careers that look impressive.
But to build careers that leave evidence.
Evidence of trust.
Evidence of resilience.
Evidence of relationships.
Evidence that we stayed long enough to make a difference when staying was the harder option.
Sometimes the strongest line on a CV isn't the biggest title.
It's the quietest number.
Ten years.
Five years.
Seven years.
Not because longevity proves excellence.
But because excellence often takes longer than twelve months to leave its mark.
Maybe that's the question every CV quietly asks.
Not simply...
"What have you done?"
But...
"What did you stay long enough to become?"