Most CVs that fail screening fail for mechanical reasons rather than weak experience. Run twenty checks before you upload: file format and name, contact details, extractable text, the top third, dates, evidence, and the specific requirements in the advert. The whole list takes fifteen minutes and catches the errors that no amount of rewriting will fix afterwards.
The File Itself
One: Format
Send a Word document or a text-based PDF. A PDF exported as a flat image from a design tool contains no extractable text, so a document that looks perfect to you can arrive as an empty record.
Two: Test the Text
Open your PDF, select all, copy, and paste into a plain text editor. What you see is roughly what a parser sees. If the order is scrambled, or entire sections are missing, fix the layout before you send it anywhere.
Three: File Name
Use your name and the role: "Jane Okoro CV Project Coordinator.pdf". Avoid "CV final v3 revised.docx", which is the version a recruiter is most likely to mislay.
Four: Remove Document Properties You Do Not Want Seen
Check the document author and title fields. Files still carrying a previous owner's name, or a title naming a different employer, are visible in the properties panel.
Contact and Identity
Five: Contact Details in Text
Put your phone number and email as plain text in the body, not inside a header, a footer, a text box or an image. Text in headers and footers is frequently dropped during extraction, which means a perfect CV with an unreachable candidate.
Six: A Professional Email Address
Firstname.lastname is ideal. An address created at school is a small, avoidable signal.
Seven: Location Without Your Full Address
Town and county is enough. Your full postal address and date of birth are not needed at application stage and expose you unnecessarily.
Eight: Right to Work Position
If you need sponsorship, say so. If you do not, say that explicitly in those words. Leaving it ambiguous causes avoidable rejections.
Structure and Readability
Nine: Single Column
Two-column layouts can be read across rather than down, interleaving your job titles with unrelated text. Keep one column for the whole document.
Ten: No Tables for Layout
Tables used to position content often extract in an unexpected order. Use plain headings and paragraphs.
Eleven: Standard Fonts, Sensible Size
A common font at 10 to 12 point. Unusual embedded fonts occasionally extract as substituted characters, and anything below 10 point is unpleasant to read.
Twelve: Real Headings
Use consistent headings such as Experience, Education and Skills. Inventive alternatives such as "My Journey" are harder for both people and tools to categorise.
Content Checks
Thirteen: The Top Third
Cover the bottom two thirds of page one and read what remains. It should establish what you are, your level, and two or three things the advert asked about. If it does not, reorder.
Fourteen: Dates on Everything
Month and year for each role, consistently formatted. Gaps should be visible and explained rather than disguised by omitting months.
Fifteen: One Achievement per Bullet
Compound bullets containing three accomplishments joined by semicolons are read less reliably and skimmed less carefully. Split them.
Sixteen: Numbers Where They Exist
Scale, volume, budget, headcount, percentage or time saved. Numbers survive summarisation; adjectives do not.
Seventeen: Named Tools and Standards
Write the real names of systems, frameworks and registrations rather than "the relevant software" or an internal project codename.
Against the Advert
Eighteen: Every Essential Requirement Addressed
List the essential criteria from the advert and find each one on your CV. Anything you cannot find is a likely rejection reason.
Nineteen: Matching Vocabulary Where It Is Standard
Where the advert uses an industry-standard term and you have used a synonym, switch to theirs. This is not stuffing; it is using the shared word.
Twenty: Read It Aloud Once
Errors that survive spellcheck rarely survive being read aloud. It is the cheapest proofreading method available and it takes four minutes.
What to Fix First If You Only Have Five Minutes
The twenty checks are not equally valuable. If you are about to submit and have no time, four of them account for most preventable rejections.
The Four That Matter Most
- Copy and paste your PDF into a text editor to confirm the text is actually extractable
- Move contact details out of any header, footer or text box into the body
- Check the top third of page one names the two or three things the advert asked for
- Confirm every essential requirement in the advert appears somewhere on the page
Those four are structural. A candidate who fails any one of them can be rejected regardless of how strong the underlying experience is, which is what makes them worth more attention than font choice or file naming.
The remaining sixteen improve your odds at the margin and are worth doing once, properly, on your base document. After that they stay fixed and you only revisit the content checks.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Hidden White Text Help?
No. Invisible keyword blocks are visible in extracted text and are treated as an attempt to mislead, which is a much worse outcome than a missing keyword.
Should I Change My CV for Every Application?
Change the top third and the skills emphasis. Rewriting the whole document each time is unsustainable and unnecessary.
Is a Photograph a Problem?
In the UK, yes, for most roles. It invites bias, occupies space that evidence could use, and many employers remove it before review.
What About Portals That Ask Me to Retype Everything?
Fill the fields properly even when you have attached a CV, because the structured fields are usually what gets searched and filtered.
How Do I Check What the Portal Extracted?
Many portals show a parsed preview before submission. Read it. If your job titles or dates are wrong there, correct the document rather than the preview.
Use It as a Checklist
Work down the twenty in order the first time, which takes about fifteen minutes. After that, checks thirteen to twenty are the ones worth repeating for every application, and the first twelve only need revisiting when you change the document itself.
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