I started in recruitment at twenty-five. I'm thirty-eight now, so that's about twelve years of sitting across a table from people and working out, or helping a client work out, whether someone is right for a role. Fresh graduates and thirty-year veterans, the quiet ones and the naturally loud ones, people from just about every background you can imagine. If there's one thing those twelve years have changed my mind about, it's how much a CV can actually tell you.
The old checklist is still alive
For a long time, hiring came down to a few things: qualifications, years of experience, and if we're honest, age and gender too. I won't pretend that checklist has disappeared, because a lot of it is still quietly in play today. But the ground is shifting. More and more of the employers and HR teams I work with are looking past experience and skills for one thing in particular, and that's adaptability.
Why adaptability matters more than it used to
Things move fast now, and AI has made them move faster still. A role can change shape within a year. So experience and skill knowledge still count, they just have a shorter shelf life than they once did. What holds its value is whether a person can keep adjusting as the work around them changes.
Adaptability isn't learning everything. It's knowing what to learn
This is something I share with candidates directly. You don't have to chase every new tool that appears. But you do need to understand what is genuinely changing your industry, especially on the technology and AI side. Once you understand that, you know what is actually worth learning and what isn't, and that is what lets you navigate this era instead of being swept along by it.
The real divide isn't age. It's the willingness to change
The resistance I see doesn't follow age at all. I've met people in their early twenties who are already stuck in their ways, and people in their late fifties who are genuinely hungry to try something new. Plenty of candidates know full well that technology is moving quickly, and still don't move with it. Some are tired, some are comfortable, some have simply had their fill of starting over, and honestly, I understand all of it. Constant adapting is tiring, and it can feel like a burden. I'm not judging anyone for feeling that way. But in a world moving this fast, the willingness to keep adjusting has quietly become one of the most valuable things a person can offer.
A gentle word on changing jobs too quickly
There's a lot of advice going around telling younger people it's perfectly fine to switch jobs every year or so. I understand the thinking behind it, and sometimes moving on genuinely is the right call. But speaking only for myself, and from what I've seen, I'd offer a small note of caution. If a job is highly repetitive, you might pick up most of it fairly quickly. In a role with any real depth, though, you're not only learning the technical side and the work knowledge. You're learning judgment, the soft skills, and how things really work when they don't go to plan, and that simply takes time to absorb.
Leave before you've had that time, and you can end up knowing what the work is without yet knowing how to handle it when it counts, or which situation calls for what. There are always exceptions, and I'm speaking in general, not about anyone in particular. But it does tend to come back to longevity. How long someone stayed somewhere, through the good stretches and the hard ones, often tells me more than any single line on a résumé.
A CV tells you what someone has done. It can't tell you how far they'll go from here.
Longevity is really about willingness to stay
And longevity matters for a very practical reason. The people doing the hiring, even the senior, well-paid ones, are employees too. When they take you on, they're investing their own time to train you, to teach you, and to pass on what they know. They will only do that if they believe you intend to stay. Nobody wants to pour everything into someone who came in simply to give it a try and have a look around. Show that you're willing to commit, and people become willing to invest in you.
Then there's uncertainty, which nobody can hire their way out of
The other thing I weigh now is whether a person can sit with uncertainty. Because in all honesty, I can't promise a candidate that the same job will still exist in five years, or that they'll be doing exactly the same thing six months from now. A new tool or a more advanced product could reshape the role, or take it over completely. That is simply the reality. The people who do best are the ones who can hear that plainly and stay steady anyway.
A note to the employers reading this
Here is where I think a lot of employers miss something. They hire on the match, the experience, the knowledge, the skills, and stop there. But finding someone who looks suitable on paper was never the hard part. If you're willing to spend real time with a potential hire, even in that first interview, use some of it to prepare them. Tell them honestly what's coming, what might change, what the next year or two could realistically look like inside your company. Don't only describe the job scope. Walk them into the uncertainty with you, so there are no surprises later and you're facing it together.
That, honestly, is also where a good recruiter earns their keep. Not just matching a CV to a job description, but drawing out these concerns and helping both sides talk about them openly before anyone signs anything.
So what am I really looking for
When we assess someone for you today, of course we read the CV. But what I'm really weighing is how they think, whether they'll keep adapting, whether they can hold steady when things are uncertain, and whether they'll stay long enough to be worth the investment. That is far harder to screen for than a résumé. It's also exactly the kind of hiring conversation we enjoy having.