Recruiter Friction Score™

Your experience is real.
So why aren't recruiters calling?

The silence isn't a reflection of your ability. Most qualified candidates get skipped — not rejected — because their CV creates a moment of hesitation the recruiter doesn't have time to sit with.

You've put in the effort. You've applied. You've waited. There's a reason the calls aren't coming — and it's almost certainly fixable.

2 minutes  ·  No CV upload  ·  Instant result
10,000+
CVs Screened
10+
Years of Hiring Experience
400+
Roles Filled

Recruiters work under time pressure and high volume. When a CV requires interpretation — even slightly — it gets deprioritised. Not rejected. The Too Hard Basket isn't about quality. It's about clarity. That's what this measures.

Why strong candidates
get quietly passed over

You're qualified. You've tailored your applications. You've done everything you were told to do. And still — silence. Or worse, a politely worded rejection that tells you nothing useful.

Here's what most career advice won't tell you: the problem often isn't what's on your CV. It's how your CV reads in the first 10–15 seconds — under real time pressure, high volume, and a recruiter who needs to make a defensible decision fast.

You might recognise this pattern
  • You're applying to roles you're genuinely suited for, and hearing very little back
  • When you do get interviews, you perform well — the CV is the bottleneck
  • You've tried tweaking it, but you're not sure what's actually creating the problem
  • The feedback you've received has been vague — or non-existent
This is not a CV review — it measures screening friction

Every CV is evaluated — consciously or not — across five decision filters. A gap in any one of them is enough to create hesitation. And hesitation, under time pressure, almost always leads to a skip.

01

Categorisation

Can a recruiter place you in 10 seconds? If not, the rest may never be read.

02

Alignment

Does your language, level and sector match the brief without effort?

03

Cognitive Load

Every second spent interpreting you increases the risk of a skip.

04

Differentiation

Why you, over the other 40? That answer must be visible — not implied.

05

Defensibility

Can a recruiter justify shortlisting you? If it takes effort, they won't.

This is where most CV advice
stops short.

Rewriting bullet points. Adding keywords. Adjusting formatting. All useful — but none of it addresses the actual decision happening on the other side of the screen.

A recruiter isn't evaluating your document. They're managing risk — deciding who they can confidently present to a hiring manager, under accountability and time pressure. If your profile creates even a small moment of uncertainty, it gets quietly set aside.

This audit is built around that decision — not career theory. It exists to show you where that hesitation is most likely happening, before it costs you another opportunity you were right for.

Most services improve the CV.
This identifies why recruiters hesitate.

The Recruiter Decision Model™

  • 01

    Categorisation

    What are they? Can I place them in 10–15 seconds? If not, the rest may not get read at all.

  • 02

    Interpretation Load

    How much effort does this take to understand? Ambiguity creates friction. Friction creates risk.

  • 03

    Alignment

    Does this match the brief? Language, level and sector need to signal immediately — not after reading.

  • 04

    Differentiation

    Why this person over the other 40? Their edge must be visible, not inferred.

  • 05

    Defensibility

    Can I justify presenting this candidate? If that answer requires effort to construct, they get deprioritised.

The Recruiter Friction Score™ measures how your CV performs across all five of these filters — and tells you exactly where the hesitation is happening. Two minutes. Free. And it gives you something most candidates never get: a real answer.

Simple to do.
Genuinely useful to know.

There's no CV upload. No preparation. No hoops to jump through. Just 11 honest questions, answered as accurately as you can, that map directly onto how recruiters actually make decisions.

The result isn't a generic score with generic tips. It's a specific reading of where your CV is likely losing momentum — and whether the fix is small or structural.

  • 01
    Take the 2-minute audit
    11 questions built around the Recruiter Decision Model™. No CV required. No right or wrong — just honest answers about how your CV currently presents.
  • 02
    Receive your Friction Score
    Your result is a composite score that reflects how clearly, quickly and confidently a recruiter can assess, categorise and move your profile forward.
  • 03
    Know exactly what to do next
    You'll see whether you need minor positioning adjustments, structural changes — or nothing at all. No guessing. Just a clear direction based on your actual result.

What you get for free

Included in your free result
  • Your Recruiter Friction Score (0–100)
  • Your score band and what it likely means
  • The key friction signal most likely affecting your applications
  • Whether the issue is cosmetic, positional or structural
  • A clear indication of your most useful next step
  • Your full result emailed so you can revisit it

Built from the recruiter's side

This isn't built by career coaches who read CVs. It's built around how recruiters actually make decisions — under time pressure, shortlist targets, and accountability to hiring managers who will question every name on the list.

Ready to find out where the
hesitation is happening?

What changes when the real
problem finally gets identified.

I went from one interview in six weeks to three interviews in two weeks after fixing the exact hesitation points the audit identified. It wasn't a wording issue. It was a positioning issue I couldn't see myself.

S
Sam
Senior Product Designer

I had the experience, but my CV was making recruiters work too hard. Once I fixed the structure and role framing, responses started coming — including from roles I had already been ignored for.

S
Sarah
Head of Marketing

This completely changed how I think about job searching. I stopped trying to sound impressive and started making myself easy to categorise and defend. That reframe changed everything.

M
Max
Operations Lead

The diagnostic was far more precise than any CV feedback I had paid for before. A small number of targeted changes led to a clear lift in recruiter response rate within the next round of applications.

E
Elena
Product Manager

Start with the free audit.
Go deeper only if the score says you should.

The free audit is designed to tell you whether deeper work is even warranted. Most people should start there — because many won't need anything more.

Start here
Free CV Risk Audit

A fast screening diagnostic that shows whether your CV is being skipped because of ambiguity, friction, or poor positioning.

Free
2 minutes. No CV upload. Instant result.
  • Recruiter Friction Score (0–100)
  • Score band + honest interpretation
  • Key friction signal identification
  • Clear next-step guidance
  • Result emailed to your inbox
For complex cases
Strategy + Support

For senior candidates, career pivots, or people who need help across CV, role targeting and interview positioning.

Custom
Quoted based on scope and complexity.
  • Audit interpretation and support
  • Role-targeting advice
  • Positioning strategy
  • Interview narrative guidance
  • Tailored support for complex backgrounds
Request Details →

The audit exists to stop you buying help you don't actually need.

Questions people ask before they realise
it might be the CV.

About 2 minutes. There are 11 questions, no CV upload, and no preparation required. The point is speed — to give you an honest signal about whether your CV is likely helping or quietly hurting you.

You'll receive your Recruiter Friction Score, a banded interpretation of what that number likely means for your applications, and a clear indication of whether you need no action, minor adjustments, or a deeper structural diagnostic. All of it is emailed to you so you can come back to it.

It reflects how easily a recruiter can understand, categorise, and confidently move your profile forward under real screening conditions. It is not a measure of your ability, your experience quality, or your career value. It measures how clearly those things are being communicated — and that distinction matters enormously.

Yes — and this is more common than most people expect. Capability and clarity are two different things. Strong candidates frequently undersell themselves in ways they cannot see from the inside. The score measures how your experience is communicating, not the quality of the experience itself. That's the gap this is designed to close.

No. This measures how your profile is being interpreted during screening — before anyone decides whether to invite you to interview. A rewrite changes the wording. A diagnostic identifies why recruiters hesitate in the first place. These are fundamentally different problems, and solving one does not solve the other.

You'll see whether your issue is likely cosmetic, positional, or structural. From there, you can decide whether to address it yourself using the direction provided, or enquire about a full diagnostic if the score suggests a deeper problem. There's no pressure either way — the result is designed to give you clarity, not create urgency that isn't warranted.

Yes. It shows you how the market currently interprets your experience. Structural clarity affects future opportunities and internal mobility — not just active job searches. Understanding where friction exists now means you can address it before it costs you an opportunity you care about.

AI can improve wording. It cannot reliably tell you where a recruiter loses confidence in your profile, why your positioning creates ambiguity, or how your experience is being categorised under time pressure. Those are screening problems — not writing problems. The tools are different because the diagnosis is different.

Because most people should not pay for help until they know whether there is actually a problem — and how serious it is. The free audit is the filter. It tells you whether deeper work is warranted, what kind, and roughly how much of a difference it's likely to make. We'd rather you start there than spend money on something you may not need.

Your experience and ability
deserves to be seen.

In two minutes, you can see whether your profile is helping you, quietly working against you, or costing you interviews you should already be getting. That's worth knowing.

2 minutes  ·  No CV upload  ·  Instant result
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