About CV Pod
We put a real person back into hiring.
Candidates now use AI to write their CVs, employers use AI to reject them, and most people are turned down without ever speaking to anyone. CV Pod exists to end that silence on both sides.
The story
Machine against machine, and people in between.
From the hiring manager's chair
A small business posts one role and gets hundreds of near-identical applications: the same confident summary, the same keywords lifted from the advert. The person reading them has no recruiter and an afternoon to spare. They can't tell who is real, so a filter makes the first cut. The filter can't tell either.
From the candidate's chair
You apply, a confirmation page thanks you, and then nothing happens. You don't know whether a person looked, whether a filter dropped you, or whether the job was ever real. You send more applications because you can't rely on any one of them. The people who lose most are those who look worse on paper than in person.
Both sides behave sensibly inside a broken system. Better sorting doesn't fix it. Sorting a pile of weak signals only gives you a tidier pile of weak signals. The problem is signal and accountability, not sorting.
Our mission
The scarce thing in hiring is trusted human attention and a guaranteed answer, not applications.
So CV Pod is built around a fair trade. Candidates bring verified presence. Employers bring a promised reply. Neither side is asked to take a leap of faith.
Candidates bring
- A Pod at cvpod.com/p/their-name, which they own
- A "Verified real person" badge from an ID and selfie check
- Three short answers in their own voice, with transcripts
- Up to five proof items, each saying how it was backed
- Honesty: "AI helped me write this", yes or no
Employers bring
- A verified company and a pod-only job
- A pledge: a human decision for every applicant in 7, 10 or 14 days
- Attention, which candidates can see in their receipts
- A reason with every decline, clicked by a person
- A public reply record they can't edit, hide or buy away
The unit of trust is the reply, not the application. A "no" from a person, with a reason, is worth more than a silent "maybe".
Who it's for
People who look worse on paper than in person.
CV Pod is free forever for candidates, with no paid tier and no way to buy a better position. Our launch focus is trades and hospitality in Australia, New Zealand and the UK. That's a focus, not a fence: anyone can make a Pod.
And for employers who want a short list of real people.
Small and mid-size businesses with no recruiter and no big hiring system: the site owner who does their own hiring, or the café operations manager who's always hiring between shifts. Also remote-first companies who need to know the person on the call is the person who applied.
They pay per pod-only post or on one monthly plan. Payment buys access to verified Pods and a public record. It never buys placement, ranking or scoring.
What our software does
Three small jobs. Nothing more.
Matches a selfie to an ID, once
Through a verification provider. Employers see the badge and verified name only. We never keep your ID image or selfie.
Writes a transcript
So an employer can read as well as listen. Nothing else is taken from your recording. No analysis of how you look or sound.
Quotes your words back
"Ask the pod" answers only from what you shared, word for word, and says plainly when it doesn't know.
What it never does
- Score, rank or judge people
- Analyse faces, voices, accents or emotion
- Auto-reject or bulk-decline anyone
- Sell a better place in any list
- Let anyone edit a reply record, including us
- Penalise you for disclosing AI help
Where we are
Launching in Australia, New Zealand and the UK.
These are the places where people say "CV". After that, everywhere. We're running a working prototype with sample candidates and employers and recruiting founding employers who'll make the pledge first. Their first pod-only job is free while we launch in their country.
We won't promote CV Pod to candidates in a country until there are at least five open pod-only jobs there. Asking people to record a Pod with nowhere to send it isn't fair.
We don't quote success figures yet. Our afternoon shortlist target and our 20-minute Pod target are design goals we're testing with pilot employers and candidates, not results.
Become a founding employerWhat we're honest about
- The badge proves a real person at the time of the check. We don't run deepfake detection on recordings.
- Revoking a link stops future views but can't take back what someone has already seen.
- A referee confirmation proves someone controlled the email address you gave. We don't check their job title.
- You need photo ID and the ability to record speech to complete a Pod today. We're working with disabled users on a supported alternative.
- Automatic transcripts can be less accurate for some accents. The recording is always the source of truth.
- The reply record measures replying, not hiring fairness or workplace quality.
Your CV, with a real person in it.
Make your Pod in about 20 minutes, or post a pod-only job and make the pledge.