You were not rejected.
You were screened out before anyone read you.
Your CV goes through the same kind of screening cascade as the molecules you put on a plate. A crude, automated primary screen throws out most of what comes in, long before real characterisation ever runs.
If your applications keep dying in silence, the likeliest explanation is not that you are unemployable. It is that you are a false negative: screened out by a blunt filter that never measured what you can actually do. This page shows you exactly where that filter is stopping you. It takes about ten minutes and costs nothing.
You did the hard part already. You ran the experiments, survived the viva, published the work. Then you sent the evidence of all of it into a system that never read a word. A keyword filter scored you on terms you did not know it was looking for. A recruiter who has never held a pipette spent six seconds on the top third of a page and moved on. None of that measured your science. It measured your CV against a filter, and your CV was written for a thesis committee, not for the filter. That is a fixable problem. It is not a verdict on you.
Run the filter on yourself
Tick each statement that is true of the CV you are sending out. Every tick is a place the primary screen can throw you out before a human reads you. Nothing is stored. The count updates as you go.
Work down the list honestly. The more truthful you are here, the more useful your count.
Switch 1: The machine never read you
The applicant tracking system matches strings, not meaning. It scores you on the advert's exact words.
Switch 2: The top third
If a human opens it at all, the first decision takes about six seconds, in the top third of page one.
Switch 3: Written in a language they do not hire in
The industry reader is not unwilling to see your value. He often genuinely cannot map it.
Switch 4: You listed the job, not what you did to it
Filters and humans both reward results, not responsibilities.
Switch 5: The shape gives you away
The shape of the page signals "academic who has not made the shift", which is the exact doubt the panel already holds.
The fix: the CV Reset
One CV, one target role, reset against all five switches. Built from your real material, never invented.
You send your current CV and one job advert you are aiming at. You get back a reset CV that:
- 1 Carries the advert's real terms, in its own words, only where they are true of you.
- 2 Moves the match into the top third, so the six-second scan lands on it.
- 3 Translates your academic work into the capability an industry reader is buying.
- 4 Rewrites every bullet from duty to evidence, using only real outcomes from your own work.
- 5 Is cut to the right shape: one to two pages, achievements first, scannable.
Your CV is used only to build your reset and is never shared. No list, no spam.
Getting interviews but not offers?
Then your problem is not the filter, it is the room. The interview dossier prepares you for one specific interview: the likely questions, model answers from your own work, and a salary script. The Reset gets you read. The dossier gets you the offer. You can take both for one role as a bundle.
Who this is not for
- You want your CV inflated. I reframe what is true and cut what is buried. I do not invent metrics, titles, or experience.
- You want a colourful two-column design. Those often break the very filter we are passing.
- You are not applying yet. The method depends on a specific advert to aim at.
My guarantee
If this check did not show you at least three specific things wrong with your own CV, do not buy anything from me. That is the point of giving it away.
And if the Reset does not carry the advert's own terms, lead with evidence in the top third, and read as one clear industry document, tell me and I will redo it or refund you. I guarantee the filter work, not the hiring decision, because that was never mine or yours to control. Getting you read on merit is.