Executive CV Guide

Managers describe what they were responsible for. Executives are read for what changed because they were there — and for the scope they carried while it changed. A board member or executive search reader decides in the first half page whether the scale of your last role matches the scale of theirs; if that answer isn't stated, it is assumed downward.

The facts a senior reader needs within fifteen seconds: headcount you led, budget or P&L you owned, geography and remit, who you reported to. Put them right under each role title — one line, plain numbers. “Operations Director — 240 staff across 3 sites, €38M P&L, reporting to the CEO” does more work than a paragraph of responsibilities.

“Led a transformation programme” is activity — every candidate at this level led one. The executive version states what changed, over what period, against what baseline: margin points gained, attrition halved, a loss-making unit returned to profit in eighteen months. Three or four outcome lines per role, each defensible in detail at interview, beat ten duty lines every time.

Where a result is commercially confidential, state direction and magnitude without the absolute figure — percentages against a baseline, or ranges. Vague is a credibility cost; confidential-but-precise is not.

Lower down a CV, generic profiles waste the best space on the page. At executive level a tight profile earns its place because the reader needs positioning before history: what kind of leader, at what scale, with what signature results. Three lines, every one specific — sector, scale, and the one or two outcomes that define the record. Board and non-executive roles, professional memberships and governance experience get their own short section rather than being buried in a job entry.

Early-career roles compress to a titles-and-dates block. Technical task detail goes — at this level it reads as operating below the role. Tool lists go. Anything a peer would assume goes. Two to three pages is the norm (see the CV length guide), and the discipline is the same as at every level: the space belongs to the evidence that decides the hire, which at this level means the last two roles.

Duty lists where outcomes should be. Transformation claims with no baseline or timescale. Buzzword density — “visionary, results-driven leader” is filler at every level but reads worst at this one. And a design so heavy it fails parsing: executive search runs on databases, so the structural rules in the ATS checklist apply to a director's CV exactly as they do to a graduate's.

One thing this guide deliberately does not offer: salary benchmarks or negotiation figures. Credible executive compensation data is region- and sector-specific, and a number we could not source would be decoration.