Show the scale you ran, not the years you logged
Get a free executive CV review that checks for budget owned, headcount led, P&L moved and the decisions only you could make.
Why senior CVs get passed over
Junior CVs fail because they're thin. Senior CVs fail for the opposite reason. Twenty two years of history, eleven roles, four pages, and by the time a hiring committee reaches your current title they've already formed an opinion from a 2009 job that has nothing to do with the role. Depth reads as clutter when the reader has ninety seconds and six shortlisted candidates.
The second failure is quieter. Director and VP CVs describe responsibilities in the language of the job description: led the function, owned the roadmap, managed stakeholders. All true, all unmeasurable. A hiring committee is trying to work out one thing, which is the size of the problem you can hold. That means budget in numbers, headcount and layers, revenue or cost lines you moved, and the calls you made when the answer wasn't obvious.
There's a formatting trap too. Executive candidates often reach for a designed two-column CV with sidebars and skill bars, and applicant tracking systems still parse those badly. Your name lands in a header the parser skips, your titles scramble, and a recruiter searching the database for "VP Operations" never surfaces you. At this level the interview usually comes through a person, but the record still has to survive the machine.
The fix isn't a rewrite from scratch. It's a re-weighting. Give your last three to five years the space they deserve, compress everything before that into a tight early-career line, and attach a number to every claim that carries weight. HRLens reads your CV against exactly those criteria and hands you a specific fix list, not general advice.
What the review looks for
Scope in numbers
Budget owned, headcount led, layers of management, regions or markets covered. Named, not implied.
Commercial impact
Revenue, margin, cost per unit, retention. The lines a board actually asks about in a quarterly review.
Decisions you owned
Restructures, build-versus-buy calls, market exits. Evidence you carried the risk, not just the plan.
Timeline balance
How much space your last three years get versus the roles nobody will ask you about.
ATS readability
Whether your file parses cleanly: real headings, standard dates, no sidebars swallowing your job titles.
Title translation
Whether your internal title reads as a director or VP role to an outsider, and how to frame it if it doesn't.
The five flags we raise most often
The twenty year timeline
Eleven roles, equal weight each. Compress anything older than fifteen years into two lines under "Earlier career".
Responsibilities where results belong
"Responsible for the EMEA sales function" tells a reader nothing. "Grew EMEA from £4M to £11M in three years" tells them everything.
An invisible team
You led people. Say how many, at what levels, and how the structure changed while you ran it.
A profile that could belong to anyone
Strategic leader, results driven, passionate about growth. Replace it with three lines of scope, sector and the outcome you're known for.
Design that breaks the parser
Two-column layouts, text boxes and header-bar contact details. They look considered and they read as garbage to the software.
Manager CV versus executive CV
| What changes | Manager level | Director and VP level |
|---|---|---|
| Opening lines | Skills and tools you use | Scope you carry: budget, headcount, markets |
| Achievements | Projects delivered on time | Commercial lines moved and risk absorbed |
| Team detail | Team size | Team size, seniority, structure you built or changed |
| History depth | Full role-by-role detail | Last three to five years deep, earlier career compressed |
| Length | One to two pages | Two pages, occasionally three with board or P&L detail |
| What the reader asks | Can they do the work? | Can they hold a problem this size? |
See what a hiring committee sees in ninety seconds
Upload your CV and get a section-by-section review with the scope gaps, ATS issues and cuts to make first.
Executive CV questions, answered
How long should a director or VP CV be?
Two pages is the working standard, and three is defensible if you carry genuine P&L, board or multi-market detail. Length isn't the real problem though. Weighting is. Give your last three to five years the bulk of the space and compress everything older than fifteen years into a short "Earlier career" block with titles, companies and dates only.
Do senior candidates still get filtered by an ATS?
Yes, more often than executives expect. Even when a search firm or an internal recruiter makes the introduction, your CV is uploaded into the same system and becomes searchable by title, skill and keyword. If a two-column layout scrambles your job titles or your contact details sit in a header the parser ignores, you simply won't surface in later searches.
What if my results are confidential?
Use ratios and relative figures instead of absolute ones. "Grew recurring revenue 40% over two years" or "cut cost to serve by a third across four markets" gives a reader the scale without exposing anything sensitive. Team size, market count and management layers are almost never confidential, and they carry more weight than most candidates assume.
Should I include a profile or executive summary?
Include one, and make it specific. Three lines covering your function, sector, the scope you've carried and the outcome you're known for. Skip the adjective stack about being strategic and results driven, because every competing candidate wrote the same sentence. A recruiter reads that block first and decides in seconds whether to keep going.
How do I present a career change into a senior role?
Lead with transferable scale rather than sector knowledge. Budget, headcount, governance and turnaround experience travel between industries far better than domain trivia does. Reframe each recent role around the size and type of problem you solved, then use a short line to name the sector knowledge you're bringing across and the gap you've already started closing.
What does the HRLens review actually give me?
You upload your existing CV and get an ATS compatibility check plus section-by-section feedback in a couple of minutes. For senior candidates that means flags on missing scope figures, vague responsibility statements, unbalanced timelines and formatting that breaks parsing, with a prioritised fix list. It's free, and you can rebuild the CV from those notes in the builder.