Treat Your CV Like a Living, Breathing Document

Writes Matt Craven, Founder of CVIA Careers, The CV, Interview & Careers Advisors

There was a post doing the rounds on LinkedIn where someone shared the CV (well resume really) that got them into Meta. Good on them – it looks pretty solid and their advice about packing it full of outcomes and using career highlights on page one is spot on. Exactly what we recommend, so it’s great to see it worked for them.

What our poster also mentioned was that they built it from scratch rather than just updating an old CV they had used last time they were looking for a job.

This is another thing we agree on.

Avoid the static

Your CV shouldn’t be a static monument to your past – it should evolve with you over time to reflect your seniority, personal brand, and value to a future client (your value proposition). It should be written from scratch every time you have a new goal, not tweaked around the edges. That means starting with a blank sheet, not a Frankenstein job on an outdated template that no longer reflects your ambitions.

Most job seekers don't do this. They dust off their CV from last time round, add their latest job, change the top job title, throw in a few lines, and hope for the best. Then they wonder why they’re not getting interviews.

Your front windscreen

As I always say, a proper CV isn’t just a list of jobs – it’s a business case – or put another way, a compelling argument for why someone should hire you. It should speak to the exact requirements of the role you’re going for, not the one you had before, or the one you think they’ll compromise on.

Think front windscreen and not rear view mirror – it needs to give irrefutable evidence of your capability to solve their problems.

Your data repository

So, where I am heading with this is that writing your CV is the easy bit. The hard bit is collating all the raw data and narrating a document that is perfectly aligned with the needs of employers. That’s why we developed the idea of the Career Autobiography ©.

A Career Autobiography is a log of your professional journey – an evolving document that captures the gold dust of your career. Every challenge overcome, every success achieved, every project completed. It’s every story you might forget five years from now unless you write it down.

And it’s not something you send to recruiters or employers. But it feeds everything else – your CV, your LinkedIn profile, your interview prep, and your career decisions. It’s also an awesome tool when having a performance review or discussions around promotion or pay increases. It contains the proof that you deserve more.

Case studies

Take the Career Highlights section on page one of a modern CV. These aren’t bullet points lifted from a job description, they’re mini case studies – evidence of impact. They’re pulled from your Career Autobiography and tailored to the role. They showcase the right skills, told in the right way, for the right audience.

This isn’t just about good writing, it’s about relevance. If the JD talks about “digital transformation,” you show how you’ve delivered one. If it mentions “cost savings,” you give them a number. If it says, “stakeholder engagement,” you demonstrate it with a real-life example.

Don’t trust your memory

The key is not to rely on memory under pressure. That’s how people end up writing weak CVs and giving bland interview answers. The Career Autobiography means you’ve already done the heavy lifting. You’re not scrambling for ideas or relying on your flawed memory bank; you’re selecting the best one for the task at hand.

Back to that Meta CV. It worked because it was the right tool for the job at that time, but things move on, roles change, and you become a different animal. What got you your last role might be the very thing that holds you back from the next.

So don’t hang onto your CV like it’s sacred. Start afresh and build it from the ground up, using your Career Autobiography for content and inspiration to shape it for the moment you’re in now. It’s all about hyper-targeting to make sure your CV ticks every box with a cherry on top.

Want to know how job-market ready you really are?

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◽ Your personal brand and positioning

◽Your job-seeker value proposition

◽Your CV, benchmarked against 2025 best practice

◽Your LinkedIn profile and visibility

◽Your LinkedIn authority score (your SSI)

◽AI detection scan – have you used AI, and how likely will your CV therefore be rejected?

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