In 2026 we called ten recruiters across different worlds — a staffing agency, a tech scale-up, a hospital, a government department, a law firm. No survey, no scientific breadth. Just: what stands out? What's worth telling candidates?
What they all opened with: opening lines
The first twenty words of your CV do disproportionate work. Recruiters don't skim to experience first — they look at your profile summary (or its absence). A strong opening line isn't marketing copy, it's an "I know what role I'm applying for" signal.
One of them, verbatim: "If I see ‘A driven professional with a passion for challenges’ at the top, I sigh and scroll. No animosity. It just says nothing. Give me ‘Backend developer with seven years in Python, the last four in fintech, looking for a role with more ownership over data pipelines’ and you've got me in one line."
Top irritations you can easily prevent
- Distracting photos. Nobody expects a studio portrait. A holiday photo with your partner half cropped out is noise. A recent, calm photo with a neutral background is enough. Or no photo — both work.
- Experience without context. "Software Engineer — Company X — 2021–2023" with nothing under it is a wasted line. One sentence about the product, what you did. Two bullets about what you built or changed.
- A four-page CV for three years of work. Not too long on principle — diluted in content. Under seven years of experience, two pages is plenty.
- Skills sections with everything you've ever touched. What do you want me to do with thirty technologies? What are you actually good at? Which three do you use daily?
- Generic hobbies. "Reading, films, hanging out with friends" — that describes everyone. Either drop it or pick one specific thing that'll spark a question.
What they all appreciate
- A two-to-three sentence profile summary tailored to this role.
- Concrete projects with measurable outcomes — not every bullet, but the highlights.
- Honest acknowledgement of a career switch or pause. "I took six months for caregiving" isn't a red flag in 2026 — an unexplained gap is.
- Explicit fit-with-this-role in your summary or cover letter — not by copying the job ad, but by naming why this role makes sense now.
The thing nobody discusses: AI CVs
We asked everyone: can you tell when a CV is AI-generated? Three of ten said "yes, sometimes you can feel it". One had a concrete example: "Bullets that are all roughly the same length, opening with a verb plus ‘successfully’ or ‘effectively’ and a result — that pattern is an AI tell." Six of ten said "no idea, and I don't care as long as the content's accurate."
Conclusion: AI use isn't a stigma, but a raw AI-generated CV without a human pass is recognisable. A few irregular bullet lengths, an idiosyncratic observation, a personal edge in your summary — those small things lift it across the "typed by a human" threshold.
Cover letters: more sensitive territory
Here the split was bigger. Half read them carefully, half only when the CV stack is close. What everyone noticed: the standard opening. "With great enthusiasm I'm applying for..." causes physical pain in some recruiters.
One: "The first paragraph should tell me something. Not that you're applying — I see that already. Something concrete about why this company, or this role, matters to you right now. Start in the middle of a thought. Stop with the formal lead-in."
Write your cover letter in two passes. First: dump everything you want to say. Second: cut the opening paragraph. Almost always your real story starts at paragraph two. Try it — it works astonishingly often.
What we take from this for CVeetje
This kind of conversation shapes why we build the tool the way we do. The profile summary is a first-class citizen in every generated CV, not an afterthought. Bullets vary in length. Cover letters never start with "With great enthusiasm", and the humanizer pass actively looks for the patterns recruiters named. Not perfect — but built from what gets seen at the other side of the desk.
Read next
- ATS systems in 2026 — what actually works, what's mythNo PDF panic, no table phobia, no nonsense about white space. A sober look at how modern ATS systems process your CV in 2026 — and what really matters.
- Tailoring a CV in two minutes — how it works without the cringeThe "one CV for everything" advice is dead. Here's how to make a job-specific CV in two minutes without fighting Word.
- ChatGPT vs CVeetje — when is a dedicated tool worth it?ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini all make CVs. So why a separate tool? An honest comparison without sales fluff.