I Gave Fifteen Recruiters The Same CV To Mark Up. They Barely Agreed On Anything.

I originally did this as a mildly selfish exercise following a comment on one CV a few months back that had been preceded by almost the exact opposite comment on another, with a different recruiter to that first person.

This was because the first told me my personal statement needed to be trimmed, and the second told me it needed to be longer – with pretty much the same resume to boot.

So being, you know, a little curious, I did the thing.

Took a copy of my resume (the original, completely unadulterated thing), shot it to fifteen different hiring managers, recruiters and industry contacts I had a loose affiliation with and asked them separately, with no context beyond 'any chance you could give this an honest read and let me know if you see any major issues', to provide their own, unsolicited feedback on the thing.

Unwitting of the fact that anyone else was doing the same thing.

I was expecting discrepancies; what I wasn't expecting was such a tiny level of agreement between them.

The personal statement advice split pretty much down the middle between extremes

Four said to scrap the personal statement entirely, nobody reads that stuff, straight into experience.

Three people said it was a standout feature of the CV that I should build upon.

Two didn't say anything about the statement, which I interpreted as it being totally unmemorable either way.

Seriously, three lines of writing got such drastically different takes on whether it should exist.

I suspect a good chunk of recruiter commentary is more of an observation of "what typically goes with this job / level of seniority" than an actual, definitive rule: recruiters used to working on senior positions will be used to CVs where experience is the only thing that really matters; whereas those that recruit on graduate level roles will value that additional context provided by the statement when a candidate has a relatively limited work history.

It doesn't make anyone wrong, just looking for something different.

Bullet point length had near on identical split

Around half of my feedback said that I should shorten all of my bullets to a single line.

Nobody has time to read multi-line bullet points.

The other half advised the reverse – that some of my single lines lacked punch or context and could be made more useful if expanded by another phrase.

Again, precisely the same bullet points were provided, and viewed by professionals doing a very similar job, resulting in a 50 / 50 split.

I did notice the recruiters that preferred brevity generally worked for high-volume, fast-moving agencies/teams that will get through hundreds of applications a day – in that scenario, it makes functional sense to make scanning easier.

Those that wanted additional detail tended to work on higher level roles, and will probably be working more closely with their hiring managers; in this case, adding another clause may genuinely add value to a lengthy read.

There was just one point of total and unmitigated agreement among the fifteen feedback forms.

And given it's about 100% disagreement on the majority of the stuff below, this is where I believe there was a genuine and useful point of learning in this somewhat indulgent exercise.

The one thing all fifteen actually agreed on

Fifteen sets of feedback all highlighted the exact same item: a job in which I worked for 8 months or so around 5 years ago.

Now, the entry wasn't "bad" worded – it just wasn't particularly informative, or explained what I'd been doing effectively.

Twelve out of the fifteen comments, using what seemed like variations of the exact same word, used the term "vague".

That was the single area that immediately influenced my next draft.

When so many independent opinions arrive on the same precise issue, that's a red flag, not a preference, and my entry was indeed made more specific with tangible outcomes.

The other feedback?

The length, tone, and existence of the personal statement etc., was disregarded as the contradictory advice itself demonstrated there was no single answer.

But when fifteen experts, on an issue unrelated to the other bits, arrive on the same page; that deserves action.

What fifteen recruiters ended up teaching me for free

So, after fifteen, perhaps over-enthusiastic recruiters all giving me their thoughts on my CV for free – this is what I learned.

Lots of CV advice, if you boil it down, really just comes down to one person's perspective and preference based on what they do most often.

That said, a single person's perspective isn't gospel; even if they state it like the laws of gravity!

Instead, it is the patterns across those varied pieces of feedback where genuine learning occurs.

If the vast majority of people tell you something, it's likely you'll want to fix that.

But if a piece of advice is split between such polarized opposing views on every single front, take it as it is: a point of personal preference.

What actually stuck with me from all this

This actually aligned with an article I came across on justjobs.info about CV best practice: basically, that most CV writing advice centres around universal, fixed rules of formatting and structure, whereas in reality the job success is dependent on the individual job spec, the organisation and ultimately the hiring manager.

The experience with fifteen very willing feedback providers did just that – it showed me what I should be aiming for without me having to go out looking for it.

A quick note on doing this yourself: avoid sending it to a huge amount of people, and preferably don't send it to anyone you want to keep on side for life.

Two or three honest feedback sources that are unconnected is generally all that you need to work out the genuine issues from the stylistic preferences.

Lastly: don't "average" the feedback.

This typically creates an incredibly beige and utterly bland document that offends no one's taste, and excites no one's eye.

Focus on what almost everyone agreed upon; leave the rest as it is.

The 15 feedbackers I consulted taught me more about a particular failing in my CV than a formatting guideline ever will.