CVs: A Thing of the Past....?

I remember doing my first CV after university, with help from the careers department, that was almost 30 years ago now!

I can't remember the actual CV itself - although I do remember it was saved on a 3" disk and must have been pretty thin, but it evolved over the next few years as I picked up a few graduate jobs which eventually got me a full time teaching job.

And obviously it's evolved since and post-teaching it's been pretty successful in getting me jobs I want - there were two I didn't get but I wasn't that far off and I kind of knew I didn't have the experience so they were a long shot.

The classic C.V...

My good old CV was, and still is pretty classic, including

• Contact details
• Employment - skills and evidenced focused tailored to the job
• Education
• Other skills - still not really sure what to put in here!

But apparently the era of the CV is over...

CVs have always been open to a bit of exaggeration — Rachel Reeves is hardly the only one who has exaggerated the amount of time she spent in a certain role...

But the advent of AI has taken this to a new level. Employers are experiencing an influx of highly polished, pre-written CVs and cover letters, as well as a huge spike in applications.

And with the right platform, job candidates can flood companies with resumes, submitting a hundred or more in a single day.

Revenge of the Employers...?

Recruiters, in turn, now begin utilising AI themselves, using it to screen candidates through psychometric tests designed to gauge personality traits.

They argue these tests offer a more honest measure of fit for some roles than traditional assessments like qualifications, experience, or interests. This kind of colder, more rational, less personal means of filtering people may well result in the more talented people getting through, rather than the more privileged.

I mean think about the old system, where people used to hand write CVs, that favoured privilege - the more time you had the more polished a C.V. you could write, so perhaps it's a good thing that AI has levelled the playing field.

Final thoughts...

This move towards more individualised testing doesn't surprise me.... I mean these days it's not just CVs that are written by AI, it's the essays that led to that degree too, so if I was an employer I'd be testing people...

And then beyond those psych tests I'd be doing a VERY thorough interview and work-role trial process with the individual candidates.

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