Every hire starts with the same document. A candidate writes down what they can do, an employer reads it, and both sides quietly agree to treat it as more than it is. A CV is a claim. Nobody has checked it, and in most cases nobody will.
That is not a criticism of candidates. Most people describe themselves honestly. The trouble is that an honest CV and an inflated one look exactly the same on the page, so the employer has to treat every one with the same suspicion — and the honest candidate pays for the dishonest one.
What the employer does instead
Because the document cannot be trusted, hiring fills up with workarounds. Each one is slow, and each one favours people who are already well connected.
- Phoning references — who were chosen by the candidate.
- Writing to institutions to confirm a certificate, then waiting.
- Shortlisting on keywords, which rewards whoever writes the best summary.
- Hiring through people they already know, which shuts out everyone else.
Separate the claim from the proof
The fix is not a better CV. It is to stop asking one document to do two jobs. A claim says “I can do this”. Evidence says “and here is what shows it”. On PULSE they are recorded as different things, and the Skills Passport labels them plainly: claimed, tested or verified.
A skill becomes verified when something stands behind it: a skill test marked on our servers, a certificate issued by an accredited institution through EduLink, or completed work with reviews from real clients. A skill with nothing behind it is still shown — it is just shown as a claim.
Why this is easier for everyone
For the employer, a shortlist can be filtered to verified evidence before anyone reads a word. Checking a certificate takes a public link rather than a phone call.
For the candidate, the proof is theirs. It travels from job to job, it does not depend on a former employer agreeing to vouch for them, and it does not need a degree behind it to count.
The CV does not disappear. It simply goes back to being what it always was — an introduction — while the evidence does the work it was never able to do.