I think many experienced professionals are being filtered out because their CV communicates the wrong signals
Over the past months, I’ve been noticing a pattern that I think is affecting a lot of experienced professionals in the current market.
Some candidates clearly have strong capability and broad experience, but their CVs still seem to underperform in ATS/recruiter screening.
My current hypothesis is that many CVs unintentionally communicate:
- operational execution instead of strategic capability
- fragmented experience instead of adaptability
- task ownership instead of transformation impact
- specialization instead of broader systems thinking
Especially for people with nonlinear careers, cross-functional backgrounds, consulting exposure, transformation work, or broad enterprise experience.
I’ve even seen cases where highly experienced professionals struggle to get interviews despite objectively strong backgrounds.
I’m curious whether others here have noticed something similar:
- either in your own job search
- as hiring managers
- or from reviewing CVs professionally
Do you think ATS/recruiter interpretation patterns are becoming too narrow?
And if so:
what signals do you think strong candidates often fail to communicate properly?