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How UK employers read a career-change CV

What a recruiter looks at in the first eight seconds, and how to make a career change read as an advantage.

Ashwood Education · 6 min read · Aug 2026

A career-change CV is read differently from a graduate one. It is scanned for evidence that you can do the new work, and for a reason to believe the change is deliberate.

The top third decides

Two lines saying what you do now, then three bullets of evidence. Everything before that is wasted space.

Your old career is not a gap

Ten years in nursing, logistics or retail is ten years of working with people, deadlines and imperfect information. Say what that gives you, in the language of the job you want.

The strongest career-change CVs explain the change in one sentence and then stop apologising for it.

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