I stopped caring about that when companies started using Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) to evaluate resumes based on keywords and other silly criteria without ever having a person actually review it.
Fair. But when you land the face to face interview with the hiring manager and peers, I think it's still good to have a nicely designed CV. And with nicely designed I don't mean lots of graphics and colors, but something that was thought out to read well.
I'm not sure anyone more than glanced at my resume for the past few decades. My interviews were basically through people I had worked with in some fashion.
For what it's worth, there's only one CV in all of history that I can remember: the "My Little Pony" themed one that went viral around 2013.
When getting feedback about my CV from coworkers, my impression is that very few of the people who personally interviewed me ever read my CV before hiring me — recruiting websites like LinkedIn, Xing, talent.io, honeypot.io genuinely seem to have replaced the CV in many cases.
(If you're wondering how I managed to get that kind of feedback from those specific people, it's all the times places have run out of money or the investors wanted a completely different direction with no iPhone app).
This is probably orthogonal to the conversation but I’ve found (later in life) that networking is the single most important thing you can do if you want to find success in business. That’s how I advise younger folks to see the world too.
As an introvert this has been a painful lesson to learn, but the reality for me is that I’ve only landed jobs at 2 out of the 7 companies I’ve worked for in my tech career where I didn’t know someone that would vouch for me from the inside.
I won't say you can't have success applyling blind to job-boards. But, especially, if you're not some cookie-cutter search skills, you're probably playing the "game" on hard level. Yes, some people will win anyway but lots of others will win out because they have a connection.