Every consulting firm we talk to has the same folder: dozens of CVs, several versions of each, and no reliable way to answer "who has done pharma work and speaks French?" without asking around. This is how to turn that folder into something you can query.
Step 1: Import what you already have
Resist the urge to design a perfect taxonomy first. Import the existing Word and PDF files and let parsing build a first draft of each profile. The gaps that appear are your actual to-do list - and they are usually far smaller than the imaginary one.
Two rules make this stage painless. Import the most recent file per person, and do not clean anything until the whole bench is in. Cleaning as you go triples the time and produces inconsistent results.
Step 2: Structure the fields bids actually filter on
You do not need forty fields. You need the four that people filter on under deadline pressure:
- Skills, with a level or years - not a flat tag list
- Seniority, so shortlists respect what the client is paying for
- Languages, at a stated level, because tenders ask for exactly this
- Certifications, with expiry dates, because expired ones fail compliance checks
Everything else - project narratives, education, publications - can stay as prose. It gets read, not filtered.
Step 3: Make search the default way to staff work
The test of a CV database is not whether it holds data. It is whether anyone uses it at 4pm on a Thursday. That means search has to be faster than asking a colleague - filters on the fields above, plus availability, in one view.
Our consultant profiles are finally in one place and always current. Resourcing a bid is a search now, not a scavenger hunt.
Step 4: Keep it current without chasing anyone
Annual "please update your CV" emails do not work, because there is no trigger attached to them. Tie updates to events that already happen:
| Trigger | Who updates | What changes |
|---|---|---|
| Project closes | Consultant confirms, lead reviews | New project, skills used, outcome |
| Certification earned or expires | Consultant | Certification and expiry date |
| Role change | Practice lead | Seniority, title |
| Bid submitted | Bid team | Nothing - it reads, never writes |
The last row matters most. If producing a CV pack edits the record, your data degrades every time you bid.
Step 5: Generate documents, never maintain them
Once the profile is the record, a CV is a rendering of it: tailored to a brief, in your brand template, in whatever language the client needs. Nobody edits a document to produce another document.
How to tell it worked
One number: how long the next CV pack takes end to end. If it has not moved, the data is not being used - and the problem is workflow, not tooling.
Start free - 10 candidate profiles and 30 CVs, no credit card.