Evidence vs Polish Diagnostic

Dimension: Pursuit · Type: Stage

A single recruiter-side question to run on your own application before submitting: “If a recruiter stripped away all the polished language from this CV today, what real evidence would still remain?” The honest answer separates an AI-augmented strong application from an AI-fluent empty one.

Introduced by Godwin Otim (People and Culture Specialist, UNICEF) at the AI for Your Career, Practical Tools and Prompts session of the UN Inter-Agency Career Week 2026, on 6 May 2026. Godwin framed AI as a mirror that sharpens self-presentation but cannot create substance, then closed with the diagnostic question that anchors this page.

The framework

When to use it

• Before submitting any application, after layer one of the Third Eye Principle.
• When you are tempted to apply broadly because the AI-polished cover letters sound good.
• As a periodic gut check on whether your CV is keeping up with your real work, or has drifted into self-presentation that the work cannot back up.

The diagnostic question

Read your CV and cover letter as if you were a recruiter. Then ask:

If I removed every polished phrase, every strong adjective, every framing flourish, what specific evidence of work would remain?

The answer is the substance of your application. Anything that survives stripping is real. Anything that does not is decoration that an experienced recruiter will discount or, worse, probe.

Steps

1. Read your application end to end. CV first, then cover letter. Track which sentences carry information versus which only set tone.
2. Mark every quantified achievement. Numbers, percentages, scale of responsibility. These are evidence.
3. Mark every named context. Specific projects, agencies, partners, countries, time periods. These are evidence too.
4. Strike through every polished phrase that is not anchored to the above. “Strong communicator”, “results-oriented”, “passionate about”, “successfully delivered”, “responsible for”. These are polish.
5. Read what is left. That is what the recruiter sees underneath the language.
6. Strengthen the residue, do not just polish more. Add a quantified outcome to the bullet that did not have one. Name the partner agency that was generic.

Worked example

A draft CV bullet, before the diagnostic:

“Successfully led complex partnership management efforts with a wide range of stakeholders, leveraging strong communication skills to deliver impactful outcomes in a challenging operational environment.”

Stripped of polish:

“[Verb] partnership management efforts with [unspecified] stakeholders, [unspecified] communication, [unspecified] outcomes in [unspecified] environment.”

There is no evidence here. Every word is polish.

The same bullet, rewritten:

“Because of multilingual stakeholder negotiation, I led the drafting and signing of memoranda of understanding with health ministries across six West African countries, securing programme sign-off in 11 weeks against an 18-week target, including the coordination of three implementing partners and one regional bureau.”

Stripped of polish:

“[Skill]. Led drafting and signing of MoUs. Six West African countries. 11 weeks against 18. Three partners, one regional bureau.”

The residue carries the work.

What recruiters look for, in priority order

1. Eligibility and non-negotiables. If these are not met, polish does not help.
2. Relevant experience and how you demonstrate it. Specificity wins.
3. Evidence and impact of results. Quantified where possible. Named where not.
4. Career consistency. Unexplained gaps and inconsistent timelines get noticed.
5. Context and scale of work. Managing five people is different from managing 500. Both valuable; the recruiter is calibrating.

What reduces credibility

• Generic AI-heavy language that sounds like every other application.
• Inflated claims without specific proof.
• Keywords without substance behind them.
• Inconsistencies between the CV’s timeline and the cover letter’s narrative.
• Broad claims with no measurable outcome.

Pitfalls

• Running the diagnostic and only polishing more. The fix is to add evidence, not better adjectives over the same residue.
• Treating numbers as evidence by themselves. “Trained 12 enumerators” is an activity. The number works only when paired with an outcome.
• Stripping too aggressively. Some polish is doing legitimate work (clear sentence structure, professional register). The point is to test whether what is underneath is real.
• Doing the diagnostic only on the cover letter. The CV is where the residue test usually catches more.
• Skipping it on internal applications. “They already know me” is the most common reason internal applicants under-prepare.

When not to use it

When you are at the very early-draft stage, before the cover letter and CV have any polish at all. The diagnostic is for late-stage review.

How I use it

Personal note pending. Davide to fill.

Related frameworks

• Skills-in-Use CV Pattern, the writing pattern that produces residue-rich bullets.
• BASIC Achievement Bank, the documentation tool that makes the residue retrievable.
• Third Eye Principle, the upstream review pass.
• Career Gap to Sprint Workflow, the workflow that catches gaps before this diagnostic runs.
• JD vs Profile Comparison, the structured fit articulation that supports the residue.

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Notes compiled by Davide Piga. Last updated 2026-05-09.