Has everyone lost trust in CV's?

Speed has always set the terms for contract roles. A client needed someone quickly, we sent one strong CV, occasionally two, and the contractor could start within days of an interview. Over the past few months, our contracting consultants have watched that pattern change.

Clients are now asking for three or four candidates for a single contract role. They want to know which one we would choose, in what order, and why. The process has started to look more like a permanent search than a contract placement. The reason comes from hiring managers who have gone to market themselves and lost trust in what the CVs were telling them.

Every CV now matches the job ad

Many candidates now write their CVs with AI, and AI is good at mirroring a job ad. On paper, plenty of candidates look like a perfect fit. The trouble starts at interview, or on day one, when the person presents differently to the document that got them there.

In contracting, that gap costs more than it does anywhere else. The search starts again, the work the contractor was brought in for sits still, and the time a short assignment depended on has already gone.

Expectations have risen at the same time. Clients are combining two roles into one, particularly at junior and mid-level, while searching for a unicorn candidate who ticks every box. When the brief asks for everything and every CV claims to have it, the CV stops helping anyone decide. When our team spoke with candidates and clients for our 2026 Supply Chain Insight Report, many clients told us recruiting had become harder over the past 12 months for exactly this reason.

The candidates who stand out are often the ones whose personality comes through. One of our consultants worked with a candidate who wrote her CV without AI and was landing far more interviews than others in her field, because it sounded like her. That kind of difference is hard to spot in a stack of CVs but it is easy to hear in a conversation.

Where a recruitment partner earns its place

A recruitment partner’s job is to close the gap between the CV and the person. The consultant presenting each contractor has interviewed them before their name reaches another desk. By the time a hiring manager sees a shortlist, someone has already tested the CV against the person behind it.

Our consultants know how each candidate talks about their work, how they handle the questions their CV leaves open, and how they are likely to settle into the team they are joining. For our clients, the person who arrives on day one is the person we described. When a contract is short and the deadline is fixed, that certainty saves a restarted search and the weeks that go with it.

Hiring managers have less time than ever

Hiring managers are stretched across more work than ever, and many are no longer reading CVs at all. Some ask us to run the process through HR and copy them in. It’s an understandable response to a full week, and most of us now expect information to arrive instantly rather than settling in with a two-page document.

Our consultants have noticed that processes move fastest when the line manager stays close, even when HR is coordinating. The line manager is the person who will work with the contractor every day and the best judge of fit. In contracting, a slow process can mean losing the person you wanted.

How we have adapted

Our contracting team has changed the way we present candidates to suit how hiring managers work now. A busy manager can quickly see who each person is, what they bring and where the risks sit, our view on compatibility, and which non-negotiables have been assessed. The CV is still there for anyone who wants the detail.

A CV still tells you where someone has been. Our consultants can tell you who they are and how they will work in your team, which is what you are hiring for. If you have a contract role to fill before the end of the year, our contracting team would be glad to talk it through.