Why the CV is failing
The argument, and the evidence
The document has not changed. Everything around it has.
The format is usually traced to a letter Leonardo da Vinci wrote to the Duke of Milan in 1482, listing what he could build. Five hundred years later the shape is much the same: a list of what you have done, in reverse order, sent to someone you have never met.
A hundred and eighty applications is not a reading task. It is a sorting task, and the first pass is done by software looking for keywords.
So the document has to do two incompatible things at once. It has to survive a parser that wants plain text in a predictable order, and it has to hold the attention of a person who will give it about eleven seconds. Most people solve this by writing for the machine and hoping the person forgives them.
What has changed is the volume
- 12.9%
- New Zealand underutilisation — around 406,000 people unemployed, underemployed, or unable to get the level of work they need. Stats NZ
- 180+
- Applicants a single Auckland or Wellington role can draw. Advertisements up 6%, applications up 7%. SEEK NZ
- 18.7%
- Auckland youth unemployment. Stats NZ
- 17,000
- People attended one Auckland job fair in March 2026. RNZ
Figures as at August 2026 and will change — quoted for illustrative purposes.
The answer is not a better-looking CV. It is to stop asking one document to do both jobs.
Send the machine something it can read.
Give the person somewhere to go.