Why I Stopped Believing in CVs

There’s a moment most people don’t talk about.

You submit an application.
You attach your CV.
You wait.

And somewhere on the other side, your entire professional story gets reduced to a quick scan. Maybe a few seconds. Maybe less.

Not because you’re not capable.
But because that’s how the system is designed.

I didn’t stop believing in CVs all at once.

It happened gradually.

First, I noticed how much effort goes into crafting them.
Tweaking bullet points. Rewording achievements. Trying to “sound right.”

Then I noticed something else.

The people who were best at writing CVs weren’t always the most capable.
They were just better at translating their work into the format the system expects.

And the ones doing genuinely great work?

A lot of them were invisible.

The more I paid attention, the clearer it became.

A CV is not a reflection of ability.
It’s a reflection of interpretation.

It tells a story, but only the kind that fits into neat sections and short lines.
It compresses years of thinking, problem-solving, and growth into something that can be skimmed quickly.

And in that compression, a lot gets lost.

Here’s the part that really changed how I see things.

Hiring isn’t actually a talent problem.
It’s a trust problem.

Employers are trying to answer a simple question:

“Can this person actually do the job?”

But instead of direct proof, they’re given signals.
Degrees. Job titles. Nicely written summaries.

So they make decisions based on proxies.

And candidates?
They learn to optimize for those proxies.

That’s how we ended up here.

A system where:

• Presentation often outweighs performance

• Keywords matter more than capability

• And potential gets filtered out before it’s ever seen

At some point, I had to ask a simple question.

What would this look like if we designed it from scratch today?

Not around documents.
Not around assumptions.
But around actual proof.

Proof of what someone can do.
Proof of how they think.
Proof that evolves over time.

That question is what I’m now building around.

Something that doesn’t try to summarize you into a page.
Something that shows your capability as it actually exists.

Not static.
Not one-dimensional.
Not open to interpretation in the same way.

I don’t think CVs are going to disappear overnight.

But I do think we’re getting closer to the point where they stop being enough.

And when that happens, the people who are used to showing real capability, not just describing it, will have an advantage.