The CV Isn't Dead. It Just Stopped Being Evidence.
Boards are shortlisting on what a leader moved, not what they were called. In Japan, where titles mean different things in different companies, that change is overdue.
The CV is not dead. Every shortlist still needs to show where someone has worked and for how long.
What the CV has lost is its role as evidence. AI writes it, polishes it and matches it to the advert. Titles have inflated in some markets and deflated in others. Boards reviewing a shortlist have stopped asking where someone has been. They ask what changed because that person was there.
That's the shift from replacement hiring to capability hiring. The old brief said: our CFO is leaving, find someone like them. The new brief says: our next three years need a finance leader who can refinance, carve out a division and build a planning function from nothing. Find someone who has done that, under whatever title they had.
The Hardest Market goes out every other week — sourced analysis of Japan's talent market.