Guide
How agency software reads your CV
Before a recruiter opens your CV, software has already read it, filed it and decided which searches it answers. This is what that software does.
30,552 live adverts, read 24 October 2026
What happens to your CV when you apply through an agency?
Much contract and temp work in the UK is filled through agencies, and an agency's own system turns your CV into a record before a person reads it. Many agencies post one advert to many boards through a multiposter such as Broadbean, which routes the replies back into that system (vendor documentation, read 26 September 2026).
From there your CV is a row in a database. Recruiters search it, and the job boards' CV databases, with keywords and Boolean strings: by title, skills, location and pay. The question is not whether your CV is good; it is whether it answers the search. Fitread's free guide covers how a CV becomes a record and how recruiters search, with dated sources.
How does a parser read your CV?
A parser extracts the text from your file, then looks for the parts it knows: contact details at the top, headings it recognises, dates it can read, job titles, and skills from its own dictionary. Bullhorn, Mercury and Colleague document Daxtra or Textkernel parsers; Bullhorn bought Textkernel (vendor documentation, read 26 September 2026).
What goes wrong is mundane. Text in a table or a text box is read out of order or not at all. A heading the parser does not know means the section under it is misfiled. A date written as "Summer 2023" is not a date. One common UK parser's published guidance asks for no tables, headers, text boxes, graphics or image files. A CV pasted as text skips the layout problems entirely, which is why Fitread can check a pasted CV's words but needs the file for fonts, margins and columns.
How does keyword matching work?
Once your CV is a record, a search is a list of terms and the record either contains them or it does not. Fitread's reading does the same comparison, with one difference: its vocabulary knows the aliases. Kubernetes and K8s are one skill, AWS and Amazon Web Services are one skill, and a CSCS card is found under its long form. Multi-word terms are matched first, so "Power BI" is never read as two words.
That tells you two things. Which of the advert's skills your CV shows under any spelling, and which term to write so that a recruiter's plainer search also finds you. Clearances are matched as eligibility and shown as a fact you hold, never as points.
Which fixes matter most?
Fitread's searchability checks are the parser's problems turned into a list: contact details, headings, dates, acronyms with their long form, text we could read, length, file type and file name. Each says what it found and what to change. The recruiter checks are for the person who reads it next: measurable results, paragraph length, tone, overused words, repeated phrases, weak openers, word count, UK conventions, web presence and job level.
What does not matter: a target score. None of the agency systems Fitread has read documents a score a CV must reach, and the popular claim that most CVs are rejected by software has no published study behind it. Fitread gives no target and never says it has found the system an agency uses, because adverts rarely say.
How do you see what the software sees?
The other half of the comparison is the advert, and Fitread reads those too: 30,552 live UK adverts on 24 October 2026, of which 5% state pay and 43% state a working pattern. The skills they name, role by role, are in the skills UK adverts ask for.
To see what the software sees in yours, Read my CV against one advert: free, no account, the file read and discarded in the same request. The reading shows the parser's view, the skills found and missing, and the fix beside each; Tailor my CV suggests wording for the gaps from your own CV, and Job Match ranks the live adverts by what it found.
Questions people ask
Agency systems such as Bullhorn, Mercury, Colleague, JobAdder and Vincere, which document Daxtra or Textkernel parsers. Adverts rarely say which, so Fitread never names one it has not been told.
The popular claim has no published study behind it, and none of the agency systems Fitread has read documents a score a CV must reach. A person decides who is shortlisted.
Often badly. The published guidance for one common UK parser asks for no tables, headers, text boxes, graphics or image files. Plain text with standard headings is the safe form.
A reading runs the searchability checks (contact details, headings, dates, acronyms, readable text, length, file type and file name) and matches the advert's skills under any spelling. One reading is free and needs no account.
See it on your own CV
Upload your CV, choose an advert and see your match score. No account needed for the score.
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