Ogilvy speaking: A CV headline matters as much as a press ad's

I have said this for thirty years: a good headline can rescue a poor body, but no body rescues a poor headline, because no one reads the body. The rule travels from advertising to CVs intact.

A bright young woman came to my office last month. Strong CV, three languages, solid references. Six months without work. The first line of her document read: "Communications and marketing professional, dynamic team player, solution-oriented."

Not a single phrase that contains a fact. "Dynamic." "Solution- oriented." "Team player." We banned those adjectives in advertising decades ago. They carry no meaning. They sit on shelves like empty containers.

I asked her about her most recent campaign. "I ran the Turkish launch for a SaaS product — 400 paying customers in 9 months, no channel marketing budget." I told her: that is your headline.

Five people read a headline. One reads the body.

What we measured in advertising was this: of every ten people who see a newspaper ad, eight read the headline; two read the body. Get the headline wrong and you've thrown away 80% of the client's money. Recruiters apply the same proportion to CVs — four seconds on the headline, one on the body. If your headline says "dynamic," the rest of the page won't get read.

A headline has one job: to give the reader a reason to read the rest. Saying "Communications and marketing professional" to a recruiter is like running an ad without a reason to buy. It's Pinkham's Vegetable Compound described as "a natural herbal blend." No one stops.

Four rules of a good CV headline

Over the years I have studied the headlines that turned to gold at my agency. They all obey the same four rules. Translated to CVs:

• Be specific. Not "marketing specialist" but "B2B SaaS marketing, 6 years, three product launches." A number, a sector, a span of years. The weight of the claim depends on all three being present.
• Aim at benefit. You are not describing yourself; you are describing what you will give the other side. Not "I managed a team of 10" but "team of 10 with whom I cut deployment time 40% in Q2." Not what you did, but what you produced.
• Verbs, not adjectives. Not "dynamic" but "led." Not "solution-oriented" but "solved." When I see an adjective in a CV headline, my eye slides off. A verb makes my eye stop.
• Don't deprive it of evidence. I once added a photograph to a newspaper headline and the ad's sales went up 32%. The CV equivalent: a LinkedIn QR next to your headline, a GitHub link, a portfolio URL. The decision-maker should feel the proof is one click away.

Mistake 1: Treating the headline as contact info

Writing your phone, email and birthplace under your name is not a headline. That is a label. A label is not an ad. A Cherry Soap ad that opened with "Date: 1873, Cleveland, Ohio" wouldn't sell any soap.

Write the label, by all means — just keep the headline separate. Name. Blank line. Headline. Body. A newspaper doesn't place its front-page banner in the middle of column four.

Mistake 2: Words like "professional" that don't feed anyone

I have never met a person who introduces themselves as an "amateur marketing specialist." If you write "professional," you write nothing. The same applies to "experienced," "skilled," "highly motivated." Every applicant uses them. Writing them does not separate you — it merges you with the crowd.

I wrote a headline for Rolls-Royce forty years ago: "At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock." The power of that ad was that it showed quiet luxury rather than saying it. Do the same in your CV: do not say, show.

Mistake 3: Writing the headline and not measuring it

I have saved the most expensive lesson for last. My first boss in advertising taught me this: "Don't run an ad you cannot measure. Guessing is stealing from the client."

A CV is an advertisement — for you. Yet most candidates fire it off as a PDF and wait. They do not know why the silence came. Was it opened? Where did the reader stop? Which page was skipped? They are guessing. Guessing is an unprofessional luxury.

Since I am being clear today, the truth is this: I would send my CV as a tracked link through something like Lurien. When opened, on which page they paused, for how long — all of it would reach me. I would send three different headlines to three different recruiters and see which one was read longest.The same split test we ran in advertising.

A small disciplinary exercise

Open your CV right now. Look at the first line under your name. Does each of the following three questions get a "yes"?

• Does this line contain at least one number? (Year, customer count, team size, ratio.)
• Does this line contain at least one verb? (Led, shipped, scaled, closed, founded.)
• Reading this line six months from now, will I recognize myself?

If three "yes"es aren't there, rewrite. Don't be embarrassed to rewrite. I rewrote my own Rolls-Royce headline eighteen times. Spending less than five minutes on a CV headline is a way of insulting yourself.

Last word: Respect begins with measurement

A good CV headline is an act of respect for the other person. It says: "I will not waste your seven seconds." A measured CV is the second layer of that respect: "I have no right to ask for more if I don't even know if it reached you."

Advertising changed over sixty years. Two things did not change: the force of a good headline, and the moral necessity of measurement. CVs are not exempt from either rule. Doing both today is easier than ever. There are no more excuses.