Inside the Search · For Candidates
See Yourself Clearly
Does the picture still fit the person you have become?
Your professional story accumulates over time.
Roles, titles, successes, setbacks and other people’s descriptions of you gradually become part of how you describe yourself.
Most of it may still be true. The more useful question is whether it is still the most useful truth.
Before updating a CV, LinkedIn profile or online presence, step back and look at the picture as a whole.
The purpose is not to make yourself look better. It is to make it easier for others — and for you — to see what is actually there.
Pause · Notice · Clarify · Test · Move
01 · Pause
Your career narrative
Before any document, there is the story you tell about your working life. Some questions to hold it against:
- What have you actually become good at?
- Where have you created meaningful value?
- What kinds of situations bring out your best?
- What responsibilities have genuinely shaped you?
- What do you want more of?
- What do you want less of?
- What are you still carrying forward because it once mattered?
A question worth sitting with
Which parts of your professional identity have you consciously chosen — and which have simply accumulated?
02 · Notice
Your CV — the record
A CV is evidence, not autobiography. It is read to understand what you were trusted with and what changed because you were there.
Responsibility tells us where you sat. Evidence tells us what you did there.
Career progression and scope of responsibility matter. So does consequence — measurable where it can be, and otherwise named plainly: decisions taken, turnarounds, governance, transformations, capability built.
Gaps and difficult chapters are better explained than disguised. Older material can be allowed to recede where it no longer helps. Keep a fuller master record, and present the version that is relevant to the conversation in front of you.
Keep the whole story. Present the relevant one.
A CV becomes clearer not only by what you add, but by what you allow to recede.
A small reflection
What is still on your CV because it remains relevant — and what is there because it once felt important?
03 · Notice
LinkedIn — the public narrative
Same facts. Same person. Different lenses.
The CV
Evidence, chronology, relevance to a role.
Public narrative, discoverability, credibility, broader positioning.
Read your profile as a stranger would: the headline, the About section, your current role and recent experience, what is visible of your achievements and activity. Does it agree with your CV? Does it still point in the direction you want to move?
Do not only update what happened. Update what it means.
Worth asking
Does your LinkedIn profile still describe who you are now — or mainly the person the market already knows you as?
04 · Clarify
Your wider digital presence
What picture forms around you before you enter the room?
The professional picture is larger than one profile. Search results and images, old company biographies, board pages, conference appearances, articles, podcasts, publications, public social media, former titles and archived profiles — all of it is read, often before the first conversation.
The aim is not perfection. It is coherence.
Not perfect. Coherent.
- Leave it
- Still accurate enough.
- Clarify it
- True, but incomplete or open to misunderstanding.
- Change it
- Outdated, inconsistent or no longer representative.
Inconsistency creates questions before you have had the chance to answer them.
Review my public footprint with Mimir the Tutor →Public only. Surface level only.
Optional · Digital Mirror
How do you actually appear from the outside?
What you say about yourself is one picture. What the outside world returns may be another. Compare search results and AI answers about you — before you polish anything.
None of this means sanitising a life. You do not need to turn your private life into a professional profile. An old role, opinion or biography may not need to disappear. It may simply need context.
05 · Clarify
Let evidence carry the story
Strategic. Transformational. Visionary. Commercial. People-oriented. Each may be true. None of them proves itself.
If you removed the adjectives, would the experience still tell the story?
Description invites belief. Evidence makes belief unnecessary.
06 · Test
Use AI as a mirror
Do not ask AI to invent a better version of you. Ask it to help you see the existing one more clearly.
Some prompts to try. Each asks for observation, not improvement.
What do you actually see?
“Read my CV as an executive search consultant. Based only on the evidence here, what would you reasonably conclude I am genuinely good at?”
What is unclear?
“Where would an executive search consultant still be uncertain about my responsibility, impact or career direction?”
What does not quite add up?
“Compare my CV and LinkedIn profile. Highlight inconsistencies in dates, titles, responsibilities or professional narrative.”
What might someone misunderstand?
“Based only on my public professional profile, what could someone reasonably misunderstand about me?”
Where is the evidence weak?
“Highlight statements that are generic, vague, unsupported or describe responsibility without showing contribution or consequence.”
Before rewriting anything
“If you could ask me only five questions before rewriting any part of this profile, what would you need to understand first?”
Before you begin — a few limits
- Do not let it invent achievements or fabricate experience.
- Verify every fact it returns.
- Do not upload confidential or NDA-covered information into public AI tools.
- Use it to challenge and structure — not to manufacture an identity.
07 · Test
The human check
Show the profile to someone who knows your work well, and ask one question.
Does this still sound like me?
Not: “Is this impressive?”
The distinction matters. An impressive profile can describe someone no one recognises. A recognisable one is what a serious conversation can actually be built on.
Before you move on
Which parts of your professional identity still belong to you — and which have simply travelled with you?
Which parts of your experience are evidence — and which have quietly become assumptions?
What comes next?
Once the picture is clearer, you can compare it with a real opportunity.
Not: Does my CV match the job?
But: What does this situation appear to need — and what does the evidence about me actually support?
A natural place to pause
You may already have enough to work with. Continue when a real opportunity gives the next questions meaning.
Has one of the questions on this page landed? Think it through with Mimir →
You have looked at the picture you are bringing with you.
The next question is not whether you fit the role. It is whether you understand what the role really is.