You spent three hours on your CV. The recruiter will spend about 10 seconds on it. That's not laziness - it's volume. Understanding what happens in those 10 seconds is the single most useful thing you can do for your job search.

I've watched recruiters work. Not in a controlled study - in actual offices, on actual desks, with actual candidate pipelines. Here's what I've observed, and what it means for how you structure your CV.

The scan path

Recruiters don't read your CV top to bottom. They scan it in a rough F-pattern:

  1. Name and current title - Are you broadly in the right space? If the role is "Senior Data Engineer" and your title says "Marketing Coordinator," the CV is closed before the second line.
  2. Most recent company and dates - Where are you now, and how long have you been there? A recognisable company name buys you another 3 seconds. An obvious gap or very short tenure raises a question (not necessarily a rejection - but a question).
  3. Top 2-3 bullet points of your current role - This is where the decision gets made. Are you doing things that overlap with what the job spec asks for? Do the numbers or outcomes look real?
  4. A quick scroll for pattern - Career trajectory. Are you moving up? Sideways? Bouncing around? The shape of the CV tells a story even when the recruiter isn't reading the words.

That's it. Four checkpoints, 10 seconds. Everything else on your CV - the hobbies, the "skills matrix," the paragraph about your personal values - is only read if you pass this stage.

What gets you into the "yes" pile

Based on what I've seen, three things consistently move a CV from "scan" to "read properly":

1. A title that maps to the role. This sounds obvious, but I see it wrong constantly. If you're applying for "Head of Engineering" and your CV title says "Technology Consultant," you've created a translation problem. The recruiter doesn't have time to work out that you're the same thing. Make it easy.

2. Evidence in the first three bullets. Not responsibilities - evidence. "Managed a team of 12" is a responsibility. "Grew the engineering team from 4 to 12, reducing delivery cycle from 6 weeks to 2" is evidence. One says what you did. The other says what changed because you were there.

3. A profile summary that answers the question: "Why this person for this role?" Most profile summaries are generic. "Experienced technology leader with a passion for delivering value." That could be anyone. A good summary is specific: it names the domain, the level, and one or two things that make you a fit for the type of role you're targeting.

What gets you rejected

Rejection at the scan stage is rarely about what's on your CV. It's about what's not.

  • No clear current title. If a recruiter can't instantly see what you do now, they'll move on.
  • Wall of text. Dense paragraphs signal that you don't know how to prioritise information. Bullets win.
  • Missing keywords for the specific role. If the job says "Kubernetes" and your CV doesn't mention it anywhere, you're relying on the recruiter to infer that you know it. They won't.
  • Outcomes buried at the bottom. If your best work is hidden in role number three, it won't get seen in a 10-second scan.
  • Inconsistent dates or gaps with no context. A gap is fine. An unexplained gap invites assumptions - and assumptions during a scan are never in your favour.

The uncomfortable truth

Most candidates optimise for completeness. They want the CV to capture everything they've done, every skill they've learned, every certification they've earned.

But completeness is the enemy of a scan. A recruiter doesn't want "everything." They want three things answered in 10 seconds:

  1. Are you roughly the right level?
  2. Have you done something similar to what this role needs?
  3. Is there evidence - not just claims?

If those three boxes are ticked in the top third of your CV, you get a proper read. If they're not, you're in the maybe-pile - and maybe-piles don't get callbacks when the recruiter has 15 stronger candidates to call first.

What this means for CV Screened

This is exactly the lens we built our match reports around. When you run a match, we're not scoring your CV against some abstract benchmark. We're asking: if a recruiter scanned this CV against this job spec, what would they see? What would they miss? What would make them hesitate?

The top 5 priority changes in every report are based on this logic. We rank fixes by impact - what moves the needle during those 10 seconds - so you're not wasting time reformatting your hobbies section when the real problem is that your current role buries the outcomes.

It's not magic. It's just understanding how the other side of the table actually works.