Applying for jobs and hearing nothing? Here are the seven most common reasons a CV is filtered out before a recruiter sees it, how to diagnose which one is affecting you, and what to change.
6 min read · Updated 2026-11-08 · By the JobLens team
Silence after an application is the most common outcome in a UK job search, and it is rarely about your ability. It is usually one of a small number of mechanical problems that keep your CV from reaching a human. The encouraging part: each one is quick to fix once you know which it is.
Tables, columns, text boxes, icons and headers hide information from applicant tracking software. Test: copy everything in your CV and paste it into a plain text editor. If the order is scrambled or sections are missing, the software sees the same mess. Fix: a single-column layout with standard headings.
Recruiters search for the terms in their own job description. If you describe the same skills in different language, you are invisible. Fix: tailor the skills section and recent bullets to each advert, mirroring its wording for everything that is true.
Most systems rank by a percentage match; recruiters open the top of the list. Under about 60% rarely gets opened. Fix: check your match before you apply and only submit when it is 90% or above, which almost always means tailoring.
"Responsible for customer service" tells a recruiter you had a job. "Handled 60+ customer queries a day with a 96% satisfaction score" tells them you were good at it. Fix: put a number in at least half of your bullets — volume, money, time saved, percentages, team size.
"Hard-working, motivated professional seeking a challenging role" is read by recruiters hundreds of times a day and carries no information. Fix: three lines that name the role, your two or three most relevant strengths and one proof point, rewritten per application.
If every application is a stretch, your match scores will always be low. Fix: apply to fewer roles where you meet most of the essential criteria, and tailor each one properly. Ten strong applications beat fifty weak ones.
Another company's name left in from the last application, a wrong phone number, a file called CV_final_v7_NEW.docx, or an email address from your teenage years. Fix: a final read on the day, out loud, and a clean file name.
Run your CV against a job you recently applied for in JobLens. The match score tells you whether you were below the line; the missing keywords show whether language is the issue; the section breakdown and recruiter's read show whether structure or evidence is the problem. Then fix the one that matters most first.
Score your CV against a job you applied for and see exactly what the software saw.
Two weeks is a reasonable point to follow up once, politely. After that, assume the application is closed and move on — but learn from it by checking the match.
If the role is still open and your first CV scored poorly, yes — many systems keep only the latest application. Do not reapply more than once.
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