> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.consultantcafe.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Do I really need multiple CVs? - URL: https://www.consultantcafe.com/do-i-really-need-multiple-cvs/ - Published: 2026-09-25T05:00:38.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-25T05:00:39.000Z - Description: I don't have time to tailor my CV. Ill give them my everything CV..... - Author: Kim Moeller - Tags: Consulting Insight It's sitting in a proposal folder somewhere. Kim\_CV\_FINAL\_v7\_reallyreallyfinal\_ProjectVersion.docx. Open it, and you find a storage shed. Every role, every credential, every project, every system, every acronym, every worthy contribution from the last decade and a half. > Somewhere in there is exactly the experience the client needs. The problem is that they have to find it. And the real objection isn't "my skills are my skills". That's the polite version. The real one is "I don't have time to rebuild my CV for every bid". Fair enough. I'll come back to that. ### **Your CV is often part of the proposal** In consulting, a CV isn't a career history. It's evidence. It helps the client answer one question: *can this person do the work we need done?* Sometimes your CV supports the proposal. Sometimes it almost **is** the proposal. And often you're nowhere near the room — not for the shortlisting, and not for the internal conversation where someone decides which three CVs go in. Your CV speaks first, and it speaks without you. ### **Evaluators don't read. They score.** In a formal evaluation your CV is scored against stated criteria, usually inside a page limit. The evaluator has a rubric and a stack, and they're looking for evidence against criteria. If they can't find it, it scores zero. Zero. It doesn't matter that you've done that work twice and did it well. That's the real cost of the storage shed. It isn't that it's untidy. It's that it under-scores. ### **Generic says everything. Tailored says why you.** A generic CV says, *here is everything I've ever done*. It tries to be all things to all people, so it risks saying nothing useful to anyone. A tailored CV says, *here is why I make sense for this work*. Same person, same career, different front window. > One-size-fits-all goes beige very quickly, especially sitting beside CVs that have clearly been shaped for the engagement. ### **Where the line is** Tailoring should make the truth easier to see. It should never make the truth harder to find. Tailoring is selection and emphasis: which of your real projects gets three lines and which gets one. It stops being tailoring the moment you invent depth you don't have. A CV in a tender is a representation — referees get called, and panels ask about the project you listed. Selection is professional. Invention is a probity problem. ### **The part I will never forget** I once owned a business that helped veterans develop their CVs. The hardest part was almost never the document. It was helping someone believe their experience transferred at all. They'd run complex operations under real pressure and describe it as "just logistics". I see the same thing in consultants. We hold back our best evidence because we've decided in advance that it doesn't count. > Tailoring your CV isn't inventing a new version of yourself. It's deciding which parts deserve the front window, and trusting they're strong enough to stand there. ### **How to do it in twenty minutes** You don't need five CVs. You need one shed and a short edit. - **Keep the master.** Everything goes in it, including what you think is too old or too small. It's never the document you send. - **Break projects into blocks.** Client, problem, your actual role, what changed because you were there. Write each one once. After that you're assembling, not writing. - **Edit against the criteria.** Put them beside you and pull forward the blocks that answer them. Use the client's words, not your internal shorthand. If they say "benefits realisation" and you've written "value tracking", change it. - **Rewrite the top.** The summary is the only paragraph you can count on being read. Make it about their problem, not your career. ### **So, do you need multiple CVs?** No. You need one honest CV and the willingness to reorganise it for the reader in front of you. Your skills are your skills. That was never the question. The question is whether the person deciding can see them in the ninety seconds they've given you. The shed stays out the back. Just be deliberate about what goes in the window.