A recent BBC investigation spoke to more than 60 women aged 40 to 65 who are struggling to find work despite decades of senior experience. One of them, 52-year-old Stacey Duguid, described having to “Botox” her CV — stripping out anything that signals her age or the length of her career — just to get past the first hurdle.
Whether or not AI screening tools are the sole cause, the pattern is real, and it’s one I see constantly in my coaching practice: experienced professionals sending out CV after CV into what feels like a void.
Let’s separate what we actually know from what’s still unproven, and then get practical about what you can do regardless of how any individual system works.
What the evidence actually shows
It’s important to be precise here, because overstating the case doesn’t help anyone make better decisions.
What we know
Experts interviewed — including an AI lawyer and a University of Cambridge researcher — say AI recruitment tools can penalise career gaps, cannot reliably assess transferable skills or intrinsic value, and operate with very little regulatory oversight of how they actually score candidates.
What we don’t know
Employers rarely disclose their screening processes, so it’s genuinely difficult to prove that any single rejection was caused by an AI tool rather than budget cuts, high applicant volume, or narrower hiring criteria generally. The BBC itself is careful to frame this as a widespread concern rather than a proven mechanism.
Workday, one of the largest providers of AI-powered recruitment software, is currently facing a legal claim in California alleging its tools filtered out applicants for discriminatory reasons; that case is ongoing. Workday disputes the claims and says its tools support human decision-making rather than replace it.
What’s not in dispute is this: CV screening at scale is increasingly automated, and career gaps, seniority signals, and even the phrasing of your experience can affect whether a human ever sees your application at all.
Why this matters more if you’re mid-career or senior
If you’ve got 20 years of experience, your CV probably contains exactly the signals that some screening tools are more likely to flag: longer employment history, a possible gap for caring responsibilities, and seniority language that can read as “overqualified” rather than “exactly what we need.”
That advice isn’t wrong, but it’s incomplete. Trimming your CV without understanding why you’re trimming it, or without adjusting your strategy elsewhere, can leave you invisible in a different way.
Five practical things you can do this week
1. Audit your CV for gap-triggering language
- Look for unexplained employment gaps of six months or more. You don’t need to over-explain them, but a brief, confident one-line context (e.g. “Career break — primary caregiver”) can pre-empt a system flagging it as a red flag with no context.
- Avoid burying career changes or freelance periods in a way that reads as inconsistency rather than intentional strategy.
2. Mirror the job description’s actual language
- Most screening tools, AI-powered or not, are still substantially keyword-driven. If the job spec says “stakeholder management,” don’t only write “cross-functional collaboration” and expect it to be read as equivalent.
- This isn’t about gaming a system dishonestly — it’s about describing your genuine experience in the terms the role is actually asking for.
3. Reconsider how far back you go — strategically, not fearfully
- Trimming early career history can help, but the decision should be based on relevance to the role, not solely on hiding your age. A CV that reads as strategically curated is very different from one that reads as evasive.
- Keep an “extended” version of your CV for networking conversations and interviews, where full context genuinely helps you.
4. Don’t rely on applications alone
- Every person interviewed in the BBC piece who found traction did so partly through human networks — not just applications. Anna Cowie, after nearly four years out of work, found that volunteering and real-world networking made her feel “seen as a human and not just lines on paper.”
- Treat direct applications as one channel among several, not your entire strategy.
5. Protect your confidence deliberately
- Rejection at scale, especially silent rejection with no feedback, erodes confidence in a way that then shows up in interviews. Build in structured reflection or support so the volume of “no” doesn’t start shaping how you present yourself.
The bigger picture
This isn’t only an individual problem to CV-optimise your way out of. The Taskforce estimates AI and automation could displace hundreds of thousands of women’s jobs by 2035, and has called for far greater investment in retraining. AI lawyer Laura Holden is calling for mandatory testing and stronger regulation of these tools before deployment, arguing current law wasn’t designed with AI decision-making in mind.
As individuals we can’t fix the regulatory gap. But we can make sure our own applications give us the best possible chance while that gap exists, and we can be honest with ourselves about which parts of the process are genuinely in our control.
Quick CV Audit Checklist
- Any unexplained gap of 6+ months has a brief, confident line of context
- Language mirrors the actual job description, not just your own internal job titles
- Early career history (15–20+ years back) is trimmed for relevance, not fear
- Achievements are quantified rather than just described
- You have a networking or direct-outreach channel running alongside applications
Want a second pair of eyes on your CV?
If you’d like a strategic CV review that accounts for both human readers and AI screening, get in touch with LHCVSolutions.
References
- Owen, M. (2026) ‘I’ve had to Botox my CV’: Are AI recruitment tools affecting women’s careers? BBC News, 6 August 2026.
- City of London Women Pivoting to Digital Taskforce — survey and research findings referenced in the above BBC article.
- Department for Education — Market and skills projections: 2020 to 2035 (data cited by the Women Pivoting to Digital Taskforce).
- Workday Inc. — public statement responding to litigation claims, as reported by the BBC.
- Dr Eleanor Drage, University of Cambridge — commentary on AI recruitment bias, as reported by the BBC.
