Build a career evidence record

What an evidence record is

An evidence record holds what you did, what changed because of it, and where someone could check. A CV is a summary written for one application. The record is the material you write every CV from, and it is yours rather than an employer's.

The difference shows under questioning. A CV line says you led the literacy strategy. The record says which year groups, what the reading gap was when you started, what you changed in the timetable, what it was a year later, and who else would remember. The first is a claim. The second survives an interview.

Why this matters more than it did

Hiring has moved towards demonstrated skill. TestGorilla surveyed 1,084 hiring professionals across the UK and United States for its 2025 skills-based hiring report. It found 85 per cent of employers using skills-based methods, up from 56 per cent in 2022, and half of UK organisations removing degree requirements from postings.

It is a vendor survey, so treat the exact figures with care. The direction is consistent with what people report in practice. If the credential carries less weight than it did, the thing carrying the weight instead is evidence of what you can actually do, and that has to come from somewhere.

What to capture, and when

Capture things when they finish, not when you need them. Fifteen minutes at the end of a project beats two hours of archaeology a year later, and the detail you lose first is the part that makes the claim persuasive.

Write for a sceptical reader who was not there. The test is whether someone could ask you a follow up question and get a specific answer.

• What the situation was, with a number if there was one.
• What you decided and why you decided it that way.
• What you actually did, as distinct from what the team did.
• What changed afterwards, including anything that did not work.
• Who saw it, and what document or record would still show it.

Separate what you did from what you were near

This is where most records go soft. Sitting on a panel is not chairing it. Contributing to a bid is not writing it. Being in the department when results rose is not having caused them to rise.

Keep the distinction in the record itself, with plain words such as led, wrote, chaired, supported, contributed. You can always present a contribution well. What you cannot do is defend a claim you have quietly inflated, and an interviewer who finds one will discount everything else you said.

Attach the evidence to a skill

An entry is more useful once it names the skill it demonstrates. Over a few years you can then see which claims rest on several pieces of evidence and which rest on one thing from 2019.

That view is uncomfortable and useful. It tells you what to work on next, and it stops you listing a skill on a CV that you could not evidence if anyone asked. It also makes the writing faster, because the next application starts from material that already exists.

Start with the last two years

Do not try to reconstruct a whole career. Take the last two years and write six entries. Pick the things you would mention if someone asked what you had done lately, and write each one properly.

Six good entries beat forty thin ones. They also show you the shape of the problem. You will find one or two where you genuinely cannot remember the numbers, and that is the argument for writing the next one when it finishes rather than when you need it.

Keep it in one place, under your control

A record spread across old appraisals, a work laptop and three email accounts is not a record. It needs to be somewhere you keep when you change employer, because that is exactly when you need it.

OTO Careers keeps this as a private record, with the evidence attached to each skill and achievement, and a public CV page you turn on only when you choose. A notebook or a document would also work. What matters is that it is one place, it is yours, and you write in it when things finish.