Your CV Is Not Getting Interviews
How to Find Out Why

1You are applying to the wrong roles

The tell: You are getting no response at all, including no rejections, across many applications and several different companies.

This is the most common cause and the one people diagnose last, because it feels like the CV must be the problem. If the requirement lists in the adverts you are applying to contain several things you have never done, the CV is not what is failing. Count the requirements across ten adverts for one title and mark each one evidenced, asserted or missing. If most are missing, the target is a step too far and the fix is to find the role between here and there.

2The CV is not being read by a machine

The tell: You get rejections quickly, sometimes within hours, and often at odd times of day.

A two column template with a sidebar, a header block containing your contact details, tables, text boxes and graphics are all ways a CV parses badly. The result is a record with your name missing or your job titles scrambled, which scores low before a human sees it. This is the cheapest cause to rule out and the easiest to fix, because it is a formatting problem rather than a content one.

3The CV is readable and unconvincing

The tell: You get through to some later stages occasionally, but the response rate is low and inconsistent across similar roles.

The usual shape of this is a CV made of responsibilities rather than results. Assisted with, responsible for, involved in. Each of those describes a position rather than an outcome, and a reader cannot tell whether anything happened. The fix is to rewrite each bullet as a thing you did and what changed, and to move the relevant evidence above the irrelevant evidence.

4The CV is fine and the volume is too low

The tell: You have sent fewer than twenty applications and are drawing conclusions from the result.

Graduate hiring is a numbers game with a long tail, and a run of silence across fifteen applications is not evidence of anything. Before rebuilding a CV, check whether there is enough data to justify rebuilding it. If there is not, the answer is more applications made properly rather than a redesign.

Why is my CV not getting any interviews?

There are four likely causes and they need different fixes: you are applying to roles you do not yet match, the file is not parsing properly in an applicant tracking system, the content is readable but describes responsibilities rather than results, or you simply have not sent enough applications to draw a conclusion from. Work out which one you have before rewriting anything, because the fix for one does nothing for the others.

How many applications should I send before deciding my CV is the problem?

Around twenty, made properly, to roles you genuinely match. Below that the sample is too small to tell a CV problem from ordinary variance. Twenty carefully targeted applications is also a very different thing from twenty copies of one document, and if you sent the second kind then the volume is not the useful number.

How do I know if an applicant tracking system is rejecting my CV?

Rejections that arrive very quickly, sometimes within hours and outside working hours, are a sign that no person was involved. The practical test is to save your CV as plain text and read what comes out. If your name, job titles and dates are scrambled or missing, the parser is seeing the same mess and a human will never see anything else.

Should I rewrite my CV or write a new one for each job?

Neither extreme. Keep one strong base CV and change the summary, the order of the evidence, and the wording of the skills line for each application so they answer that advert. Full rewrites are unsustainable and identical copies do not work, and the middle version takes about fifteen minutes per application.

Does a low CV score mean my CV is bad?

It means it is weak against the job it was measured against, which is not the same thing. A CV is only strong or weak relative to a target, and the same document can be a strong match for one advert and a poor one for another. That is why a score with no job attached to it tells you very little.

Is it the CV or the cover letter?

Almost always the CV, because for most graduate applications the cover letter is read after a shortlisting decision has already been made, if it is read at all. Fix the CV first. A good cover letter cannot rescue a CV that did not get past the first screen.

What should I change first if I have no idea which cause it is?

Rule out the parsing problem, because it costs twenty minutes and is binary. Save the file as plain text, read it, and if it is a mess then rebuild the layout as a single column with plain headings before touching a word of the content. If it comes out clean, move on to counting requirements against ten adverts.

How can I get an objective read on my CV?

Measure it against a specific job rather than asking whether it is good. Careery reads a CV against one advert you paste in and marks each requirement as evidenced, asserted or missing, which tells you whether the problem is the match, the evidence or the wording. The first score is free.