A CV is a poor filter for warehouse work. It screens for people who know how to write one. That is not the same as people who can do the job well, and it quietly excludes anyone whose working life has been recorded by somebody else.

Norhem runs three distribution sites. It had long treated a CV as the entry ticket to being considered at all, even for roles that had nothing to do with writing one.

Who the document was filtering out

Norhem’s roles ask for reliability, physical capability, a licence in some cases and a willingness to work the shift pattern. None of that is well represented in a two-page document, and much of it is not represented at all.

The sites between them fill a few dozen roles a month, mostly picking and forklift work. The application form had been written around the assumption that every candidate could produce a CV to match it.

The people who struggled to produce a CV were often the ones with the most relevant experience: agency work, seasonal contracts, years of work never written down.

Recruiters could see good candidates falling out at the first step, before a single interview. The reason was simple: the form asked for a document some of the strongest applicants had never needed to write. Those same applicants were the ones most likely to walk away rather than fight the form.

Assessing the work, not the document

Norhem uses Yardstick Agents to run a structured conversation about availability, experience and certifications, so an application can be complete without a CV at all. The candidate answers the same questions everyone else answers.

The output is a structured record rather than a free-text impression: what the person has done, when they can work, what they are licensed to operate. It is comparable across applicants in a way that prose never was.

The same questions run whether or not a CV is attached, so a candidate who has one is not read any more closely than a candidate who does not. Safety and equipment licences are verified the same way for both.

A CV is still welcome

Candidates who have one can attach it, and it is read. It is simply no longer the entry condition, and it does not outrank the answers given in the structured round.

Who came through the door

Warehouse roles are now open to applicants without a CV. 34% of people hired in the last two quarters applied without attaching one at all.

Every candidate answers 100% of the same structured questions, regardless of what documents they bring. The applicant pool for open roles has grown by +28% since the change, mostly from people who had ruled themselves out before.

The pool grew; the standard did not move. Site managers still run the final walk-through and physical assessment in person, which nothing here has replaced.

What they are doing next

Norhem is reviewing its remaining application forms site by site, to find any other step that quietly asks for a document rather than for the work itself.