In today’s recruitment market, jobseekers are told constantly about algorithms, keywords, and ATS systems. You’ll hear advice on Boolean searching, parsing, SEO and rankings—and yes, these things matter. But here’s the truth most people miss: if your CV or LinkedIn profile doesn’t first impress a human being, it will never even enter those systems.
At The Career Experts (TCE), this is our USP: we know how to balance human impact with digital optimisation so your CV is not only discovered but acted upon.
Step One: Passing the Human Test
Recruiters, HR teams, and hiring managers are still the gatekeepers. If your CV looks poorly formatted, is unclear, or fails to demonstrate your value quickly, it won’t be downloaded into an ATS, uploaded to a CRM, or shared with a hiring panel. In other words: bad presentation means you’ll never get near the digital tools designed to filter talent.
That’s why at TCE, every CV we craft is built first and foremost to connect with human readers—positioning your achievements, value, and story in a way that compels decision-makers to take action.
Step Two: Mastering Parsing
Once your CV makes it past the human eye, it enters the recruiter’s system. Here, parsing extracts your data into searchable fields (titles, dates, skills). Poor formatting, inconsistent job titles, or missing keywords can all derail you at this stage.
TCE ensures your CV is parser-friendly while retaining its strategic, professional look for human readers. It’s not an either/or—we build for both.
Step Three: Climbing the Rankings with SEO
Recruiters don’t scroll endlessly. Whether in an ATS, LinkedIn, or job board database, the candidates that rank highest in searches are the ones who get shortlisted. This is recruitment SEO—optimising your profile and CV with the right keywords, structure, and consistency so you’re discoverable.
But again—SEO only matters after your CV has been captured in the first place. That requires Step One: making it compelling enough for someone to download or upload.
Step Four: Thinking Like Recruiters with Boolean Search
Recruiters use Boolean logic to search: combining terms, excluding irrelevant profiles, and surfacing the candidates who match most closely. When you understand this, you can reverse-engineer your own CV and LinkedIn profile to align with recruiter behaviour. This is where Boolean meets SEO and parsing.
TCE builds your career marketing materials with this in mind—so when a recruiter runs a search, you appear in the results.
The TCE USP – Human First, Digital Second
Here’s where so many candidates get it wrong: they optimise their CVs for systems, not people. They focus on keywords and formats without ensuring their story resonates with a real human being.
At The Career Experts, we do it differently. We know:
- If it doesn’t impress a human, it won’t even reach the ATS.
- If it isn’t parser-friendly, your profile will be misread or buried.
- If it isn’t keyword-optimised, you’ll never climb the rankings.
We combine all three disciplines—human impact, parser alignment, and search optimisation—into a single, structured approach. This ensures your CV is downloaded, parsed correctly, surfaced in searches, and ultimately read by the decision-maker who matters.
Final Thought
Recruitment is no longer about just having a CV—it’s about navigating a multi-layered process where human judgment and digital systems intersect. If you don’t get the first step right, the rest doesn’t matter.
That’s why TCE clients win: we build career marketing strategies that capture human attention and climb digital rankings. This dual advantage is what takes you from being another applicant… to being the one hired.
