How to Adjust Your CV in 2026

What changed in 2026

Two things changed. First, almost every mid-sized company now runs CVs through an AI screening pass before a human ever sees them, applicant tracking systems and resume parsers have quietly become the first audience for your CV. Second, hiring teams have moved toward skills-first reading: they look for proof you can do the job before they care about where you did it, what your degree was in, or how senior your last title sounded.

So your CV now needs to work for both: machine-readable for the parser, easy to skim for the human. Format is no longer a matter of taste, it is a filter.

How long should a CV be in 2026?

One page if you have less than ten years of experience, two pages if you have more, and three only if you are an academic, a senior executive or applying for a regulated role that explicitly asks for a long-form CV. Anything longer than two pages for a standard role gets skimmed at best and skipped at worst, recruiters spend an average of seven seconds on the first scan.

The one-hour update checklist

1. Use a single-column layout. Two-column templates look elegant but break in most parsers, text reads top-to-bottom, then jumps, and your job titles end up scrambled in the screening tool. Stick to a clean, single-column structure with clear section headings: Summary, Skills, Experience, Education.
2. Replace your objective with a 3-line summary. Who you are, what you do best, and what you're looking for next. Three lines, no buzzwords, no "results-driven team player." Example: "Product manager with 8 years in B2B SaaS, focused on activation and onboarding. Shipped two products from zero to launch and led a team of five. Looking for a senior PM role in a growth-stage company."
3. Add a Skills block near the top. Six to ten concrete skills, mixing tools and competencies ("SQL, Figma, A/B testing, cross-functional leadership"). This is what AI screeners read first and what hiring managers scan for. Match the wording to the job description, within reason and only where it's true.
4. Rewrite each role around outcomes. Lead with what changed because of you, not what you were responsible for. Quantify whenever you can: percentages, currency, headcount, time saved. "Reduced onboarding time from 14 to 6 days" is worth ten lines of duties.
5. Cut anything older than 10 years to one line. Unless it's a flagship role, early experience belongs in a single "Earlier experience" line at the bottom listing companies and titles. Recruiters care about the last decade, not the first.
6. Save as PDF with selectable text. Never export as an image, never as a Pages or Keynote file, never as a scan. Parsers can't read images, and recruiters can't copy your contact details. Test it: open the PDF, try to select your name with the cursor, if you can highlight the text, you're fine.

Will an AI screener actually read my CV?

In most cases, yes, and increasingly it's a generative model rather than a simple keyword filter. Modern screeners summarise your CV, score it against the job description, and surface the top candidates to a human recruiter. The implication is practical: write for clarity rather than for keyword stuffing. A clean, well-structured CV that matches the spirit of the job description outperforms one stuffed with buzzwords almost every time.

Avoid headers and footers for important information (some parsers ignore them), avoid tables (they scramble), and use standard section names, "Experience" reads better than "Where I've Made Things Happen."

What to delete from your CV today

• Photos. Outside a few European countries that explicitly expect them, photos add bias risk and parsing errors with no upside.
• Date of birth, marital status, nationality. Not relevant, often illegal to ask, and they take up prime real estate.
• "References available on request". Assumed. Use the line for a real outcome instead.
• Skills bars and 5-star ratings. Subjective, unreadable to parsers, and quietly mocked by recruiters.

One last thing

Send your updated CV to one person you trust before sending it to a single employer. A second pair of eyes catches the typo, the inconsistent tense and the line that made perfect sense at midnight but reads strangely in daylight. If you don't have that person, our recruiters will give you honest, free feedback, that's literally what we do.