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Create ResumeAfter you apply for a job, your CV usually enters an applicant tracking system, gets filtered or searched by recruiters, and is then reviewed against the role requirements before anyone decides whether to shortlist, reject, hold, or ignore it. In the UK job market, this process is rarely as simple as “best candidate gets called first”. Your CV is being judged against timing, role fit, salary expectations, competition level, internal candidates, hiring manager preferences, and whether the recruiter can quickly understand your relevance. Silence does not always mean you are a bad candidate. It often means your CV did not clearly answer the hiring team’s immediate question: “Is this person worth progressing for this specific job?”
When you click apply, your CV does not usually land beautifully on someone’s desk with dramatic lighting and a recruiter whispering, “At last, the one.”
More often, it goes into an applicant tracking system, which is software employers and recruitment teams use to collect, organise, search, filter, and manage applications. From there, your CV may be reviewed by an internal recruiter, agency recruiter, HR coordinator, talent acquisition specialist, hiring manager, or sometimes more than one of them.
What happens next depends on the company, the role, the number of applicants, and how urgent the vacancy is. A CV for a hard to fill engineering role may get reviewed quickly because the employer has limited options. A CV for a popular marketing, admin, graduate, HR, or customer service role may sit among hundreds of similar applications.
This is the first thing candidates need to understand: your CV is not reviewed in isolation. It is reviewed in context.
That context includes:
How many people applied
How closely your CV matches the job description
Whether your experience is easy to understand
Whether your salary level looks realistic
Most medium and large UK employers use an applicant tracking system, usually called an ATS. Smaller companies may use email inboxes, spreadsheets, LinkedIn projects, recruitment platforms, or a very tired hiring manager with too many tabs open.
An ATS does not normally “reject” your CV in the dramatic robotic way people imagine. The bigger issue is visibility. Your CV needs to be readable, searchable, and easy to match to the vacancy.
The system may store information such as:
Your name and contact details
Your CV file
Your answers to screening questions
The job you applied for
Your application date
Your current or previous job titles
Whether you have the right location or work authorisation
Whether the hiring manager has already seen stronger profiles
Whether the recruiter is screening quickly under pressure
Whether the role is still genuinely open
This is why two candidates with similar experience can get completely different outcomes. Hiring is not always clean, fair, logical, or beautifully organised. Sometimes it is structured. Sometimes it is chaos wearing a lanyard.
Your location
Your right to work status if asked
Your salary expectations if included
Recruiter notes and interview feedback
In practice, recruiters often use the ATS to sort and search applications. They might filter by keywords, review applications in date order, search for specific job titles, or look only at candidates who answered screening questions in a certain way.
This is where candidates sometimes misunderstand ATS advice. The goal is not to trick software. The goal is to make your CV easy for both the system and the human to interpret.
A good CV is not stuffed with keywords. It is clear, specific, and aligned with the job. If your experience is relevant but buried under vague wording, the ATS may store it, but the recruiter may not spot the value quickly enough.
Before anyone opens your CV, your answers to application questions may affect whether you are prioritised.
Common screening questions in the UK include:
Do you have the right to work in the UK?
Are you located within a commutable distance?
What is your notice period?
What are your salary expectations?
Do you have experience with a specific system, sector, qualification, or regulation?
Are you willing to work hybrid, onsite, shifts, weekends, or travel?
Do you require visa sponsorship?
Some of these questions are practical. Others are blunt filtering tools.
Here is the reality candidates do not always like hearing: if the employer needs someone with UK right to work and cannot sponsor, a strong CV may still be rejected if you need sponsorship. If the role is in Manchester three days a week and you live in Cornwall with no relocation plan, your experience may not matter. If the budget is £45,000 and you are seeking £70,000, the recruiter may not progress you unless there is a very strong reason.
That does not mean you have done anything wrong. It means the vacancy has constraints.
The mistake is assuming rejection always means “not good enough”. Often it means “not workable for this specific role”.
The first human review is often quick. Very quick.
When recruiters have a high volume of applications, they do not lovingly read every sentence first. They scan for signals. That may sound harsh, but it is how screening works when there are fifty, two hundred, or five hundred applications for one job.
When I look at a CV, I am usually trying to answer a few questions fast:
What does this person actually do?
Have they done something close to this role before?
Are they at the right level?
Is their experience recent enough?
Are they likely to be affordable?
Is there anything that creates risk or confusion?
Can I confidently explain this candidate to the hiring manager?
That last question matters more than people realise.
A recruiter is not only deciding whether you are good. They are deciding whether they can present you clearly. If your CV makes your background difficult to explain, you become harder to shortlist, even if you are capable.
Recruiters are not mind readers. If you want to be considered for a project manager role, your CV needs to make project management visible. If you want a finance business partner role, your commercial finance experience needs to be obvious. If you want a software engineering role, your technical stack, impact, and product environment need to be clear.
Do not make the recruiter dig. In a competitive UK market, buried relevance often becomes missed relevance.
This is one of the most important hiring realities.
Candidates often want employers to see their potential. Recruiters are usually asked to screen against the brief.
That brief may include essential requirements, preferred requirements, salary level, location, reporting line, team structure, sector exposure, systems knowledge, qualifications, seniority, and sometimes unspoken preferences from the hiring manager.
The hiring manager might say they are “open minded”, but then reject every CV that does not come from the same industry. They might say they want someone “commercial”, when what they actually mean is someone who has influenced sales, pricing, margins, or revenue decisions. They might say they need someone “hands on”, when what they really mean is they do not want a strategic leader who has moved too far away from delivery.
This is why generic CVs struggle. A generic CV asks the employer to interpret your relevance. A strong CV makes the match obvious.
For example, if the job requires stakeholder management, do not just write “excellent stakeholder management skills”. That tells me very little. Show the context.
Weak Example
Managed stakeholders across the business.
Good Example
Partnered with finance, operations, and senior leadership teams to resolve reporting delays, improve forecasting accuracy, and support monthly commercial decision making.
The second version gives me evidence. It shows who you worked with, what you worked on, and why it mattered. That is the difference between saying you have a skill and proving it.
After the first review, your CV usually goes into one of several categories.
This means the recruiter or system has decided not to progress your application. Reasons may include lack of relevant experience, salary mismatch, location issues, missing qualifications, sponsorship constraints, poor CV clarity, or stronger applicants already in process.
A rejection is not always a judgement on your whole career. It is usually a decision against one vacancy.
This means your CV looks relevant enough to move forward. You may be contacted for a recruiter screen, phone call, video interview, assessment, or direct hiring manager review.
Shortlisting does not mean you have the job. It means your CV has earned more attention.
This is the category nobody talks about enough. Your CV may be good, but not the strongest. The recruiter may hold it while they review other applicants. You may be suitable if the first choice candidates drop out, reject the salary, fail interviews, or accept other offers.
This is why you can sometimes hear nothing for weeks and then suddenly get a call. You were not necessarily ignored. You may have been in the “possible, but not first batch” pile.
Sometimes nobody has properly reviewed your CV. The role may be paused. The recruiter may be overloaded. The hiring manager may be slow. The vacancy may be changing. The company may be waiting for approval. The job advert may still be live even though final interviews are already happening.
This is frustrating, but it is common. Job adverts often look more organised from the outside than the hiring process feels on the inside.
No response is one of the most common complaints from job seekers in the UK, and honestly, I understand why. It feels dismissive. It feels like your effort disappeared into a black hole.
There are several reasons it happens.
The first is volume. Some roles receive hundreds of applications, especially remote, hybrid, entry level, admin, HR, marketing, customer service, and generalist roles. Recruiters may simply not have the capacity to respond personally to everyone.
The second is poor process. Some employers do not have proper rejection workflows. Some ATS platforms are badly configured. Some hiring teams leave candidates sitting in limbo because nobody wants to make a final call.
The third is uncertainty. The company may not reject you immediately because they are waiting to see how stronger candidates perform. This is not great candidate experience, but it happens constantly.
The fourth is role movement. The job may be paused, changed, withdrawn, filled internally, or put on hold due to budget. Candidates often blame themselves when the real issue is that the vacancy was unstable.
The fifth is CV mismatch. Your CV may not have shown enough relevant evidence quickly enough. This is the part candidates can control.
The hard truth is this: you cannot control employer manners, process quality, or internal politics. You can control whether your CV is clear, targeted, specific, and easy to shortlist.
Recruiter screening is not just keyword matching. It is pattern recognition.
When I review a CV, I am looking for alignment between your background and the employer’s problem. Every vacancy exists because the employer needs something solved. They need revenue protected, work delivered, risk reduced, customers supported, systems improved, people managed, projects completed, or gaps covered.
Your CV needs to show you can solve the right kind of problem.
The strongest CVs usually make these things clear:
Your current or most relevant role
The level you operate at
The type of companies or environments you know
The scope of your responsibilities
The tools, systems, methods, or regulations you use
The results or improvements you contributed to
Your progression and career direction
Your fit for the specific vacancy
Recruiters also notice risk signals. Some are fair. Some are questionable. But they exist.
Risk signals may include:
Unexplained gaps
Frequent short stays with no context
A CV that looks much too senior or too junior for the role
Vague job titles with unclear responsibilities
No measurable outcomes where outcomes would be expected
Too much task listing and not enough impact
Location or salary uncertainty
A career change with no clear positioning
A CV that looks copied from a job description
None of these automatically ruins your chances. But they create questions. If your CV creates too many unanswered questions, the recruiter may move on to a candidate who feels easier to progress.
That is not always fair, but it is real.
If the recruiter shortlists you, your CV may be sent to the hiring manager. This is where the evaluation changes.
Recruiters often screen for match, clarity, and viability. Hiring managers usually look more closely at capability, team fit, technical depth, and whether your experience matches the day to day reality of the role.
A hiring manager may ask:
Has this person handled the same type of work before?
Will they need too much training?
Do they understand our sector or customer base?
Are they likely to stay?
Are they too senior and likely to get bored?
Are they too junior and likely to struggle?
Does their CV show enough ownership?
Can I see evidence of judgement, not just activity?
This is where a CV full of responsibilities can fall flat. Hiring managers do not just want to know what you were responsible for. They want to know what you actually influenced, improved, delivered, fixed, managed, or prevented.
For senior roles, this becomes even more important. A senior candidate who only lists duties can look surprisingly weak. At that level, employers expect decision making, commercial awareness, leadership, trade offs, and outcomes.
For junior roles, the expectation is different. Hiring managers may look for learning ability, reliability, communication, organisation, customer awareness, technical foundations, or evidence that you can handle the working environment.
The same CV advice does not apply equally to every level. A graduate CV, a mid level professional CV, and a senior leadership CV are judged through different lenses.
Keywords matter, but not in the silly way people often describe them.
Your CV should include the natural language of the role. If the job advert asks for financial reporting, stakeholder management, Power BI, audit preparation, risk assessment, account management, or case handling, and you have that experience, use those terms clearly.
But keyword stuffing is not strategy. It makes your CV harder to read and sometimes less credible.
The best approach is to use keywords inside real evidence.
Weak Example
Skills: stakeholder management, reporting, dashboards, analysis, communication, leadership, Excel, Power BI, problem solving, commercial awareness.
Good Example
Built Power BI dashboards for monthly sales reporting, giving regional managers clearer visibility of pipeline movement, revenue gaps, and account performance.
The second version still includes keywords, but it gives them context. That is what helps both ATS search and human screening.
Formatting also matters. A CV does not need fancy graphics, icons, columns, text boxes, or design tricks. In fact, those can create parsing issues or distract from the content.
For most UK applications, use:
Clear section headings
Reverse chronological order
Simple formatting
Standard job titles where possible
Readable spacing
Plain language
Evidence based bullet points
A Word or PDF format unless the employer specifies otherwise
The goal is not to create the prettiest CV. The goal is to create the easiest CV to understand and trust.
This is where many candidates get stuck. They assume strong experience should automatically create interviews. It does not.
Strong candidates get rejected for several reasons.
Sometimes they are strong, but wrong for the role. A senior marketing director may be impressive, but not right for a hands on marketing manager role where the company needs someone building campaigns personally every day.
Sometimes they look expensive. If your CV signals a salary level far above the role, employers may assume you will not accept, even if you would.
Sometimes they look unfocused. A varied career can be valuable, but if the CV does not explain the thread, recruiters may struggle to understand where you fit.
Sometimes they undersell relevant experience. Candidates often assume the employer will connect the dots. They usually will not.
Sometimes they apply too late. If interviews are already underway, a good CV may be ignored because the process is already moving.
Sometimes internal candidates are involved. The advert may be external, but someone internal may already be strongly favoured. This is annoying, but common.
Sometimes the hiring manager changes the brief halfway through. They thought they wanted one thing, then after seeing candidates, they decide they want something else. Candidates experience this as rejection. Internally, it may be a messy role definition problem.
This is why job searching can feel irrational. It is not purely merit based. It is timing, positioning, clarity, fit, and process quality all colliding at once.
You cannot control every part of the hiring process, but you can make your CV easier to say yes to.
Start by asking: “What does this employer need to believe about me within thirty seconds?”
For most roles, they need to believe:
You understand the type of work
You have done similar work before or can realistically step into it
Your level matches the vacancy
Your background makes sense
Your CV is credible
You are not creating obvious practical blockers
Then shape your CV around that.
Your profile section should quickly position you. Not with generic phrases like “hard working professional with excellent communication skills”, because that says almost nothing. Use it to explain your role, level, sector, specialism, and value.
Your experience section should focus on relevant achievements and responsibilities, not every task you have ever touched.
Your job titles should be clear. If your internal title is unusual, add a recognisable equivalent where appropriate. For example, “Client Success Partner” may be clearer if paired with account management context.
Your bullet points should show scope and outcome. Scope tells the recruiter how big or complex your work was. Outcome tells them why it mattered.
Strong CV bullet points often include:
Who or what you supported
The scale of work involved
The systems, tools, or methods used
The commercial, operational, technical, or customer impact
The result, improvement, or decision supported
The easiest CVs to shortlist are not always the longest or most decorated. They are the clearest.
You do not need a perfect CV. You need a CV that answers the right questions for the right role.
Recruiters will overlook minor imperfections if the match is strong. A slightly clunky CV with excellent relevant experience can still get shortlisted. A beautifully written CV with weak relevance usually will not.
This matters because candidates often spend too much time polishing wording and not enough time improving positioning.
A good CV should make your fit obvious in three areas:
Role fit, meaning your experience matches the job
Level fit, meaning you are not obviously too junior or too senior
Practical fit, meaning location, salary, availability, and work rights are workable
If one of those areas is weak, your CV needs to compensate with clarity.
For example, if you are changing sectors, explain transferable relevance. If you are returning after a career break, give simple context and bring attention back to current capability. If you are applying for a slightly more senior role, show evidence of stretch, leadership, ownership, or decision making.
What does not work is pretending the concern does not exist. Recruiters notice gaps, shifts, and mismatches. The smart move is to reduce uncertainty, not hide from it.
After submitting your CV, do not just wait passively, especially in a competitive UK market.
First, track your applications. You need to know where you applied, which CV version you used, the date, salary range, recruiter contact, and any follow up notes. Otherwise your job search becomes a fog of job boards and mild despair.
Second, check whether the role is worth following up. If it is a high volume advert with no contact name, follow up may not be possible. If there is a recruiter, hiring manager, or agency contact, a short, relevant message can help.
A useful follow up does not beg for attention. It reinforces fit.
Good Example
Hello, I applied for the Finance Analyst role today and wanted to briefly highlight my experience in monthly reporting, Power BI dashboards, and commercial variance analysis within a multi site environment. I would be very happy to discuss if my background looks aligned with what the team needs.
That kind of message works because it gives the recruiter a reason to look. It is specific, calm, and relevant.
Third, do not stop applying because one role feels perfect. Candidates often emotionally attach themselves to one application and then pause everything. Please do not do that to yourself. Until you have an offer in writing, keep moving.
Fourth, review patterns. If you apply for twenty roles and get no responses, your CV may not be aligned, your targeting may be off, or you may be applying into roles where the competition is much stronger than you realise.
If you get recruiter calls but no interviews, the issue may be salary, communication, role fit, or how your experience is being positioned.
If you get interviews but no offers, the CV did its job. The next problem is interview performance, evidence, fit, or competition.
Different stage, different diagnosis.
A lot of job search advice makes the hiring process sound more logical than it is. Let me clean up a few common myths.
Not always. The person whose CV most clearly matches the brief often gets the interview. There is a difference.
A highly qualified candidate can lose out to someone less impressive but more obviously relevant.
ATS platforms can filter, rank, and search applications, but most rejection problems come from poor match, poor clarity, timing, volume, or human decision making. Blaming the ATS for everything can stop candidates from fixing the parts of their CV that actually need work.
It often does. Recruiters may start screening before the advert closes. If strong candidates are found quickly, later applicants may get less attention.
No response can mean many things, including volume, role pause, internal candidate, weak process, or timing. Do not turn every silence into a personal verdict.
One master CV is useful as a base. But sending the same version everywhere usually weakens your chances. You do not need to rewrite your whole life story each time, but you do need to adjust emphasis for the role.
When your CV gets no response, do not guess emotionally. Diagnose it practically.
Use this framework:
Fit: Did your CV clearly match the role requirements?
Level: Were you applying at the right seniority?
Evidence: Did you prove the skills, or only claim them?
Clarity: Could a recruiter understand your relevance quickly?
Timing: Did you apply early enough?
Practicality: Were salary, location, right to work, and notice period workable?
Competition: Was this a high volume role with many similar applicants?
Process: Could the role have been paused, changed, or filled internally?
This framework matters because it stops you from making lazy conclusions like “the job market is impossible” or “my CV is rubbish”. Sometimes the market is tough. Sometimes the CV is unclear. Sometimes the targeting is wrong. Sometimes the employer is disorganised. Often, it is a mix.
The goal is not to blame yourself. The goal is to improve the parts you can control.
Your CV has one main job after you apply: to help the recruiter and hiring manager quickly understand why you are worth progressing for that specific role.
It is not there to tell your entire career story. It is not there to impress everyone. It is not there to prove you are a good person, a hard worker, or a “passionate professional”. It is there to make a hiring decision easier.
In the UK job market, where many roles attract strong competition, clarity is an advantage. Specificity is an advantage. Relevance is an advantage. A CV that explains your value without making the reader work too hard will almost always perform better than one that is vague, overloaded, or written for every possible job.
The uncomfortable truth is that employers do not have unlimited attention. The useful truth is that you can make their decision easier.
And in hiring, easy to understand often becomes easy to shortlist.
Written by Simar Malhi, a recruiter and headhunter with international recruitment experience. I write about CVs, job applications, hiring decisions, and the reality behind recruitment processes. My goal is to help candidates understand more honestly how employers, recruiters, and hiring managers actually select candidates.
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