Why El Reg’s Resume Advice Misses the Mark (and What to Do Instead)

A couple of weeks ago, someone in my community sent me a link to an article in The Register (also known as El Reg) and asked, “Hey Diana, what do you think of this Register article on tech CVs?” 

You can read the original piece here.

If you don’t know El Reg, it’s a British tech publication renowned for its sarcasm, eye-rolls, and snark. Entertaining? Absolutely. Informative? Yes. But when it comes to career advice, their recent piece on resumes (or CVs as they are more commonly known in Europe) is a classic case of well-intended but misguided.

Here’s why I care enough to weigh in: I worked in tech for decades in a wide variety of roles — project management, product management, business analysis, quality assurance, coding, and more. These days, I coach tech and tech-adjacent professionals on building careers that feel good. And I don’t do this in a vacuum: I consistently partner with recruiters and hiring managers at multiple levels, so I stay plugged into how resumes are actually reviewed and decisions are made.

So let’s break this down: what El Reg gets right, where they veer off course, and what you should do instead if you want your resume to get attention for the right reasons.

✅ What El Reg Gets (Mostly) Right

ATS exists — and it matters

Yes, applicant tracking systems (ATS) are real, and most resumes pass through them at some point. That part is correct.

But here’s the nuance: the primary role of an ATS is workflow and tracking, not rejecting 90% of applicants in a digital bloodbath. Those scary LinkedIn posts proclaiming that “most resumes are never read”? Grossly exaggerated. In most companies, every resume is reviewed by an actual human. It might be for only a few seconds, but they are getting looked at.

Recruiters rely on the ATS to keep hundreds of candidates straight, not as a grim reaper. Treating it like the only gatekeeper is missing the point.

You need the right terms

I don’t love the word “keywords” because people obsess like they’re gaming Google SEO. But the core idea — alignment and clarity matters — is spot on.

If you’re a cloud technologist and the job posting calls for Terraform and AWS, you need those terms on your resume. Period. You don't want leave them off and rely on more general terms like “cloud infrastructure.” It works best if you have both - the specific tools and the broader concepts.

Because alignment isn’t just about ATS, humans are reading your resume too. The right terms prove you’ve done the work before and can do it again.

Tailoring beats blasting

Here’s a point I’ll happily co-sign: one generic resume sprayed across 200 jobs rarely works.

It’s called spraying and praying and it’s a waste of time.

I call it "busywork masquerading as a job search".

Look, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time, but spending a few minutes tailoring sections of a well-targeted resume — tweaking your executive summary, moving relevant bullets higher, highlighting the projects that match the job — typically outperforms the “one-size-fits-none” resume.

❌ Where El Reg Gets It Wrong

Here’s where their advice goes off the rails.

1. “List every tool you’ve ever touched.”

No. Just, no. A laundry list of every tool you’ve used since 1997 makes you look unfocused — and risks attracting jobs at the wrong level.

Context matters. If you’re applying for a highly technical role — say, a cybersecurity engineer — listing specific tools (and sometimes versions) can be important. But if you’ve moved into leadership — a director of cybersecurity, for example — your real value is in mobilizing people and strategy. Your resume should reflect that shift. That's not to say you pretend you didn't work on tech in the past, but you're solving different problems as a leader and your resume must speak to that louder than it speaks to your past as a technologist.

Also? Any skill or technology you list on your resume, you’re effectively saying, “I’m open to doing this again.” If you never want to touch something again - leave it off.

👉 Highlight current, relevant skills that align with the jobs you want. Leave off the outdated or unwanted ones.

2. “Stuff in buzzwords and synonyms everywhere.”

Fun fact: this is where resume scanning tools like Jobscan or TealHQ get people into trouble. They spit out a score — “You’re a 53%! Add this keyword 5 more times!” — and suddenly you’re bastardizing your bullet points with nonsense.

When you try to stack multiple instances of keywords or put every synonym in your resume, the document becomes unreadable. Even if it’s technically accurate, submitting a resume full of technical jargon and never discussing impact is a missed opportunity.

Another issue? El Reg suggests ATS can’t tell context — that they only count exact keywords. That might have been true a few years ago, but modern systems are more sophisticated. Many applicant tracking systems now use AI, semantic search, and natural language processing (NLP) to evaluate resumes. Many are designed to assess whether a term is being used in the right context — not just if it appears at all.

Resumes pass through ATS, but that’s not the whole story. They’re seen by recruiters, hiring managers, and even future peers. None of them is impressed by buzzword soup. What gets attention is a narrative that includes compelling results.

3. “Mirror job postings word-for-word.”

Copy-pasting job descriptions into your resume is one of the fastest ways to blend into the crowd. Why? Because job postings are written in tasks. But no one hires you for tasks. They hire you for results.

Here’s a story: a few months ago, a friend of mine forwarded me a resume from an acquaintance that looked OK at first - until I got to the last two pages. Those pages were nothing but every bullet from a job posting, copied verbatim, with self-assessed ratings like “expert,” “proficient,” “experienced,” and "developing." The candidate was proud of their 99% match score from a resume scanner.

I happened to be at a career coaching conference when I received this resume, so I passed it around to about half a dozen certified coaches, including nationally award-winning resume writers. Every single one said it was one of the worst resumes they’d ever seen, for 3 reasons.

1. It was boring AF because there were no results.
2. It was too darn long because they had work experience and then regurgitated the whole job posting.
3. The ratings thing they did was completely unhinged - there was no basis for the categories - and it undermined the candidate’s credibility.

👉 Mirroring job postings word-for-word doesn’t make you stand out. It makes you look like everyone else at best, and like a candidate who can’t read the room at worst.

4. “Flatten your resume into plain text.”

The ATS can absolutely choke on overly complex formatting, but the solution is not to turn your resume into a wall of Courier New text.

Clean, scannable design is the goal. Use headings, bullet points, and white space. Minimize graphics and tables. Avoid text boxes. Keep it simple and human-friendly.

If you want a deeper dive, I’ve written a separate article on formatting you can check out right here. But trust me: you don’t have to sacrifice readability to survive ATS.

5. “Make your CV dull so AI likes it.”

Your resume isn’t supposed to read like an accounting textbook — it’s supposed to be clear. Recruiters skim in seconds, and the resumes that stand out are the ones that make impact obvious: scope, action, skills, results.

And here’s something El Reg doesn't talk about: resumes aren’t only used in online applications. Sometimes your resume lands on a desk because of networking. In that case, a dull resume is deadly. If someone has already vouched for you, don’t waste that opportunity with lifeless, task-heavy bullets.

6. “Let AI write your resume.”

AI has its place, but not as your resume ghostwriter. Dump your work history and a job posting into ChatGPT and ask it for a resume, and you’ll get bland, generic mush that might not even reflect your experience.

Every one of the fixes I’ve mentioned above can be done without AI. But if you want to use it, use it smart:

• Tighten phrasing.
• Polish impact.
  
• Stress-test alignment against a posting.
  The thinking — the narrative — has to come from you.

🎯 Wrapping It Up

I don’t think El Reg set out to give bad advice. Their article is well-intended and makes a few good points. But it’s misguided in ways that can waste your time and weaken your job search - especially in an age where a lot of companies are being sucked into the idea that vibe coding is the whole story.

The thing is, your resume isn’t about “beating the machine.” It’s about showing humans — recruiters, hiring managers, peers — just enough evidence that you can deliver results that they are excited to invite you for an interview. That's it.

What actually works?

• Show relevant, current skills.
• Write results-first bullets.
• Make it clear and scannable.
• Tailor for the job, but don’t clone the posting.
• Use AI as a helper, not a replacement.
  

If you want to learn more about my no-BS resume writing framework — the same one I teach my coaching clients — I break it all down in my free training, 'How to Write a Resume That Gets Attention.' You can watch the replay here.