cv-evidence-baselisted

# CV evidence base ## What this is for Most CVs are not weak because the wording is bad. They are weak because the person's best evidence never made it onto the page. They omit the things they found easy, because they assume everyone finds them easy. They describe responsibilities they held rather than outcomes they caused. They file their whole career under a job title the market has quietly moved past. None of that is fixable by rewriting sentences. It is fixable by asking questions until the missing material comes out, and then deciding what deserves space. So this skill does not polish prose. It interrogates a person, produces a durable record of what is true about their career, and tells them what to change and why. The rewriting happens elsewhere. ## The two readers Everything here follows from a fact about how CVs are actually consumed. There are two readers, and they want opposite things. **Reader one** spends roughly seven seconds deciding whether to bin it. For this reader, only the top third of page one exists. Their job is elimination, and they are looking for reasons to stop reading. **Reader two** has already decided the candidate is interesting and is now hunting for reasons to be confident. This reader wants *more*. Shortening the document actively hurts here. This is why "how long should it be" is the wrong question. The right question is whether the top third earns reader two's attention, and whether the rest rewards it. Keep both readers in mind wh