The Mid-Career CV Problem: Why Good Professionals Keep Writing Bad Resumés
Your CV should sell your future, not list your past. This guide breaks down how to rewrite your resume for senior leadership success.
For mid- to senior-level professionals eyeing the next rung of the leadership ladder, the CV is a strategic asset. It should be precise, confident, and ruthlessly focused on where you're heading, not where you've been. Yet far too often, these CVs read more like archaeological exhibits than leadership pitches.
This isn’t a formatting issue. Its a sign of a deeper breakdown in narrative control. A CV at this level should tell a curated story about value, growth, and leadership readiness. When it devolves into a chronological backlog of tasks, it suggests a lack of clarity about what actually matters now. And that’s the real problem.
What’s surprising is that it’s often the most experienced, most competent people who fall into this trap. Perhaps it’s modesty, or the mistaken belief that career progression speaks for itself. It doesn’t. Not at this level. A strong CV reframes your history into a case for future leadership. And it does it in two pages, not twenty.
The Career Timeline That Nobody Asked For
One of the most persistent mistakes made by mid-senior professionals is sticking rigidly to a cradle-to-now career timeline, starting with the very beginning. It’s the classic chronological CV. While this made sense when you were fresh out of university, with limited experience to showcase, it becomes counterproductive once you're deep into your career and managing people young enough to list TikTok strategy as a core competency.
At the senior level, you’re applying to lead. A CV that begins with your first job from two decades ago sends the wrong message entirely. It implies your career peaked early or that you don’t know how to frame relevance. Neither of these is a good look.
If your CV dedicates more space to your early 2000s admin role than it does to your last two leadership positions, you’re just reciting your timeline. And timelines are dull unless you're a historian or writing a legal affidavit.
Yes, keep reverse chronology. No, don’t give equal airtime to everything. Your CV should open with your sharpest, most recent material; the roles and accomplishments that speak directly to the kind of position you want next. Earlier career steps still matter, but they’re context, not content. Think of them as the footnotes, not the thesis.
Professionals often confuse completeness with clarity. But more isn’t better. Better is better. Focus on showing who you are now, the value you bring today, and where you're going. That’s what decision-makers are actually reading for. Not how well you stapled reports in 2003.
Doing ≠ Leading: Why Your CV Still Sounds Like a Job Description
One of the quietest killers of a promising CV is language that simply describes what was done, rather than what was achieved. It’s surprisingly common among mid-career professionals: CVs filled with passive phrasing, generic tasks, and vague managerial duties. At a glance, they read like job descriptions copied straight from HR templates. At this stage of your career, that is strategically self-defeating.
Hiring managers are not interested in whether you were “responsible for coordinating meetings” or “tasked with managing client relationships.” That kind of language tells them what your job was, not how well you did it. More importantly, it doesn’t tell them how you think, what you prioritised, or what changed under your leadership.
This is the critical difference between activity and impact. Saying “I was there and did the job” is not enough. You need to show what improved because of your presence. A senior-level CV should read like a highlight reel of decisions made, systems improved, revenues lifted, risks reduced, or teams transformed.
The most effective way to frame this is action followed by outcome. For example:
“Redesigned procurement strategy, delivering £1.2M in savings across three business units.”
“Led sales team restructure that improved YoY revenue by 23 percent and reduced churn by half.”
It’s not about embellishment or showboating. It’s about demonstrating commercial awareness, strategic thinking, and your ability to produce results that matter to the business.
So, next time you write a bullet point, ask yourself: “Would this make someone want to hire me, or just confirm I turned up?” If it’s the latter, keep editing. Leadership is set of outcomes, not a job description. Let your CV reflect that.
Length is Not a Proxy for Value: The Curse of the 10-Page CV
Let’s address one of the more persistent myths of the professional world: that a longer CV somehow conveys greater seniority. It doesn’t. In fact, the opposite is often true. A sprawling, ten-page CV packed with every project, committee, and side initiative from the last two decades symbolises a lack of curation.
Senior leaders do not want your entire work history. They want relevance, clarity, and impact. They are scanning for alignment, not reading for entertainment. The CV is a filter, not a feature-length film. If it requires multiple sittings or a notepad to keep track of your career, it’s not working.
Long CVs usually emerge when professionals confuse volume with value. Every bullet point feels precious. Every task is treated like a milestone. But not all experience is equal, and not every detail belongs in a document designed to get you a meeting, not a lifetime achievement award.
The best CVs read like they’ve been edited with purpose. Early roles are summarised. Older experience is contextual.. The focus is on your recent leadership, your strategic wins, your business impact.
Two pages is often more than enough. Three if you must. Beyond that, you are asking someone to find the needle in your own haystack.
The ability to distil decades of work into a tight, compelling summary is itself a mark of seniority. It shows you understand what matters. It shows you know how to frame a message. It shows that you lead with focus.
If your CV is still ten pages long, the problem is how you’re telling the story. And it’s time for an edit.
Lack of Structure = Lack of Strategy (At Least, That’s How It Reads)
A disorganised CV quietly undermines your credibility. At a mid to senior level, how you structure your CV is often read as a proxy for how you think. If the document feels cluttered, reactive, or directionless, it suggests the same might be true of your leadership approach.
Too many CVs look like they were cobbled together from performance reviews, old cover letters, and forgotten project briefs. Paragraphs stretch endlessly. Headings are inconsistent or missing entirely. Bullet points multiply with no logic or hierarchy. The result is a document that feels more like an internal audit than a compelling argument for advancement.
Structure matters because it signals intent. It shows the reader that you know what’s important, what deserves emphasis, and how to communicate it clearly. At this stage of your career, clarity is expected.
Start with an executive summary. This is the place to frame who you are, what you bring, and what kind of leadership you represent. It should not be a list of soft skills. It should be a one paragraph strategic overview.
From there, organise your experience in a way that’s easy to follow. Use consistent formatting. Create logical sections. Group achievements by theme if it helps build a stronger narrative. Every detail of your layout should help the reader absorb your value quickly.
Think about user experience. Your CV should be designed to be skimmed in under a minute, while still leaving a clear and lasting impression. That means clean design, logical flow, and enough breathing room to let the right ideas land.
If your CV is difficult to read, it suggests your leadership might be difficult to follow. Make it easy to say yes.
A CV at mid-senior level is a leadership document. It should speak clearly to who you are now, what you stand for professionally, and where you’re heading next. If it doesn’t, you’re potentially blocking your own progression.
No one is hiring you for your ability to complete tasks. They are hiring you to lead, shape outcomes, and influence direction. That means your CV needs to reflect strategic awareness, narrative control, and a sense of focus. You need to show that you understand your own value well enough to communicate it concisely.
This is about showing that you can think like a leader by choosing what matters, structuring it well, and communicating it clearly.
The frustrating truth is that many of the worst CVs come from high-performers who haven’t taken the time to step back and reframe their story. But leadership is often judged on how well you can step out of the weeds and present the big picture. Your CV is where that begins. Make it count.
At StratEx - Indonesia Business Advisory we work with mid to senior professionals to help them build CVs that reflect real strategic value. Contact us if you're interested to learn how our career consultancy services can help leave lasting impact.