What HR Directors Actually Score in Your CV (Not What You Think)

What HR Directors Actually Score in Your CV

200,000 CVs reviewed.

Same mistakes.

Different names.

Most candidates believe CVs get read. They do not.

They get scored. In six seconds. By a person who has already made a provisional decision before reaching your second paragraph.

That person is not your recruiter.

Your recruiter passed you through. The ATS filtered the pile. Now you are in a different room entirely — in front of a director who uses a scorecard, not a feeling.

The scorecard does not care about your font choices. It does not care about your hobbies. It does not care that you are passionate about driving results.

It cares about six things. Most candidates fail at least two. Eighty percent fail the same one.

Here is the scorecard I use.

The Frame Nobody Tells You

The ATS is not your enemy. You already passed it. You are reading this because you keep passing the ATS and going nowhere.

The ATS screens for keywords, qualifications, and format. It passes roughly the top 25% of applicants through to human review.

Then a director picks up the pile.

That is a different game. Different rules. Different elimination triggers.

Recruiters read CVs looking for reasons to include you. Directors scan CVs looking for reasons to exclude you. The mindset is reversed. The speed is the same — six seconds on the first pass.

In those six seconds, three things register: your title, your most recent role, and the density of your first visible achievement. Everything else is detail — reviewed only if those three pass.

If they do not pass, the CV moves to the left pile. No second look. No benefit of the doubt.

The left pile is where most CVs go.

The 6-Point Scorecard

One point at a time. Each one is a gate. Fail a gate and the remaining points do not get scored.

Point 1 — Title Alignment

Does your title match the role level?

If your current title is Marketing Executive and the role is Marketing Manager, the seniority gap reads as a stretch application. Stretch applications go to the left pile.

Pattern from 2,000 CVs: 34% had title mismatches of one level or more. Of those, fewer than 8% made the shortlist — and only when the achievement section was exceptional enough to compensate.

Point 2 — Achievement Density

How many measurable outcomes per page?

Fewer than three quantified achievements on the first page signals a responsibilities-focused CV. Responsibilities tell me what your job was. They do not tell me what you delivered.

The benchmark: senior roles require at least four to five data-backed outcomes on page one. Numbers, percentages, timelines, team sizes, budget ranges. Without them, the CV is a job description — not a candidacy.

Point 3 — Generic CV, Keyword Gaps, and Non-Measurable Impact

This is where 80% of candidates fail.

The CV could belong to anyone in the role. No fingerprint. No specificity. Language that describes the job rather than the person doing it — at a level that does not match the seniority being applied for.

Three failure modes travel together. A generic CV almost always has keyword gaps. A CV with keyword gaps almost always has no measurable impact. They are one failure with three faces.

Point 4 — Career Trajectory Logic

Does the progression make sense?

Unexplained gaps, lateral moves without context, title drops between roles — each one triggers a question. If your CV does not answer it, you do not get to.

A gap is not an automatic rejection. An unexplained gap is. Candidates who contextualise transitions — even briefly — pass this point at a significantly higher rate than those who leave the reader to guess.

Point 5 — CV-to-Role Mirroring

Does your language reflect the job specification?

Not keyword stuffing. Vocabulary alignment. A senior candidate who describes their work in junior-level language signals the level they are actually operating at, regardless of their title.

The test: pull three phrases from the job description. Find them or their equivalents in the CV. If they are absent, the candidate either has not done the role or has not done the work of applying for it.

Point 6 — The Immediate Elimination Trigger

One thing ends it before the scorecard finishes.

It varies by seniority and sector. At director level: a CV longer than three pages with no executive summary. At manager level: a personal profile that opens with “I am a passionate and driven…” At every level: spelling and grammar errors in the first paragraph.

The trigger is not arbitrary. It signals how the candidate prepares, presents, and prioritises. All three matter in every role being screened.

What Candidates Think You Are Scoring

Design. Length debates. Hobbies. Whether to include a photo. References available on request.

None of these are on the scorecard.

Design only matters if it obscures information or signals poor judgement. Length only matters if it exceeds three pages with no justification for the volume. A photo is irrelevant in markets where it is not expected. Hobbies are irrelevant unless they directly signal something the role requires.

Most CV advice is written by people who have never held a scorecard. It is written by career coaches, resume writers, and recruiters — not by the directors making final hiring decisions.

The advice optimises for getting through the ATS. The scorecard is what waits on the other side.

Why 80% Fail Point 3

Point 3 is not one mistake. It is three failure modes that travel together.

Failure Mode A — The Generic CV

The CV could belong to any competent person who has held similar roles. No fingerprint. No specificity. Nothing that tells me who this particular person is as a professional.

Example: “Led a team to deliver successful projects on time and within budget.”

That sentence appears, in near-identical form, in 1 in 4 CVs reviewed at manager level.

The fix is not adding more words. The fix is adding the number that makes the sentence belong to you and nobody else.

“Led a team of 11 to deliver a £2.3M infrastructure migration — three weeks ahead of schedule, 4% under budget.”

That sentence belongs to one person.

Failure Mode B — Keyword Gaps

Not ATS keywords. Director-level vocabulary.

The words a candidate uses to describe their work reveal the level at which they are actually operating. A candidate applying for a Head of People role who describes their work as “managing HR processes and supporting managers” is using coordinator language for a strategic role.

The director scanning that CV does not see a promotion-ready candidate. They see someone who has not yet made the cognitive shift to the role they are applying for.

Coordinator language: “Managed HR admin, supported onboarding, assisted with performance reviews.”

Director language: “Redesigned the onboarding framework for a 200-person scale-up. Reduced time-to-productivity from 90 to 52 days. Built manager capability programme covering 34 line managers.”

Same person. Different vocabulary. Completely different scorecard result.

Failure Mode C — Non-Measurable Impact

Responsibilities are not achievements. Most CVs are lists of responsibilities dressed up as achievements.

The responsibility version:

• Responsible for client account management
• Managed relationships with key stakeholders
• Supported business development activity

The achievement version:

• Managed portfolio of 14 client accounts worth £1.8M annual revenue — zero client losses over 24 months
• Rebuilt relationship with at-risk enterprise account; retained £340K contract at renewal
• Contributed to three new business pitches; two won, generating £520K in new revenue

The information required to write the achievement version already exists. Every professional has numbers, timelines, and outcomes in their work history. Most do not know they are allowed to use them — or how.

The three failure modes compound each other. A generic CV uses coordinator-level language. Coordinator-level language describes responsibilities. Responsibilities produce no measurable impact. The scorecard records Point 3 as a fail.

The CV moves to the left pile.

One Hard Truth. One Instruction.

Most job seekers spend hours perfecting the design of a CV that fails in six seconds on content.

Design does not get you shortlisted. Evidence does.

Your CV is not a record of where you have been. It is a business case for why you should be hired. A business case requires specificity, measurable outcomes, and language that matches the level of the role.

Before your next application goes out, do one thing.

Open your CV. Read the first page. Count the numbers — percentages, budget figures, team sizes, timelines, revenue figures, cost savings. Count them.

If you count fewer than four, your CV is failing Point 3 right now.

Fix that before you change a single design element.

Continue reading at: inspireambitions.com