A blind CV template is a CV structure with all identifying details removed — name, photo, contact details, and indirect identifiers such as graduation years and employer names — so candidates are assessed on experience alone. This page gives you the full removal checklist and a complete blind CV template you can copy and use today.
What is a blind CV?
A blind CV (also called an anonymised or anonymous CV) is a CV with the candidate's identifying information stripped out, so the reader sees skills, experience, and achievements without knowing who the person is. Recruitment agencies use blind CVs for two distinct reasons. The commercial one: removing the candidate's contact details prevents a client from approaching the candidate directly and bypassing the agency's fee. The compliance one: blind submissions support bias-reduction and GDPR data-minimisation practices, and a growing number of employers — particularly in the public sector, legal, and financial services — now require anonymised CVs at the shortlist stage.
A blind CV is not a censored CV. Everything that demonstrates capability stays: responsibilities, achievements with metrics, skills, qualifications, sector experience. What goes is anything that identifies the individual directly, or indirectly through easily traceable details. The line between the two is exactly what the checklist below covers.
What should you remove from a CV to make it blind?
This is the checklist agencies actually work to. Remove or replace:
- Name — replace with an agency reference (e.g. "Candidate FC-2026-041").
- Photo — always, including headshots embedded in headers.
- Contact details — phone, email, postal address, including in headers and footers, where they hide most often.
- Links — LinkedIn URL, portfolio, GitHub, personal website (all instantly identifying).
- Date of birth and age — and indirect age markers: graduation years, school start dates, "30 years' experience".
- Nationality, gender, marital status — and pronouns in the profile text.
- Employer names — replace with a descriptor: "[Sector] company, [size]" (employer names plus job titles make candidates trivially findable on LinkedIn).
- Education institution names — replace with the institution type if the client allows.
- Identifying interests — committee roles, club names, published works under the candidate's name.
Keep: job titles, date ranges (months and years of employment), responsibilities, quantified achievements, skills, qualification names, languages, and location at region level (e.g. "Greater Manchester") where commute matters.
A complete blind CV template you can copy
Here is a complete blind CV structure, ready to use. Copy it into Word or your template system, keep the bracketed placeholders as your fill-in guide, and apply the checklist above to the source CV as you transfer content.
CANDIDATE REF: [Agency reference, e.g. FC-2026-041]
Submitted by: [Agency name] — [Consultant name and contact details]
Role applied for: [Job title / vacancy reference]
Location: [Region only, e.g. Greater Manchester]
Notice period: [e.g. 4 weeks]
PROFILE
[3–4 sentences summarising seniority, sector experience, and core
strengths. No name, no pronouns if possible, no employer names,
no age markers — e.g. "A senior commercial finance professional
with experience across FMCG and retail, leading teams of up to 12."]
KEY SKILLS
- [Skill or competency 1]
- [Skill or competency 2]
- [Skill or competency 3]
- [Continue to 8–12 items]
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
[Job Title]
[Sector] company, [size, e.g. 200–500 employees], [region]
[MM/YYYY] – [MM/YYYY or Present]
- [Achievement or responsibility, quantified where possible]
- [Achievement or responsibility]
- [3–6 bullets per role]
[Repeat the block above for each role, most recent first]
EDUCATION
[Qualification], [Subject]
[Institution type, e.g. UK university / FE college], [region]
[Omit graduation years — they are an age marker]
CERTIFICATIONS
- [Certification name, awarding body]
- [Omit dates if they indicate age]
LANGUAGES
- [Language — proficiency level]
A downloadable Word version of this template is available on request — contact us and we will send it over.
How do you apply a blind CV template manually — and what does it cost?
The manual process: open the source CV and the blind template side by side; transfer content section by section, rewriting the profile to remove pronouns and identifiers; replace each employer name with its sector-and-size descriptor; strip graduation years and certification dates; then sweep the places identifiers hide — headers, footers, file metadata, hyperlinked email addresses, and the filename itself (sending "John_Smith_CV_blind.docx" defeats the exercise).
Budget 10–15 minutes per CV on top of ordinary formatting time, so a fully branded blind CV built by hand costs 25–40 minutes. The real risk is not the time but the consistency: redaction quality depends on whoever does it and how rushed they are, and one surviving identifier — a name in a footer, an email in the metadata — undoes the whole submission. If your agency produces blind CVs occasionally, the template and checklist above are enough. If you produce them weekly, manual redaction becomes both a cost line and a compliance exposure, which is where automation earns its keep.
Or generate blind CVs automatically
FormaCV applies anonymisation as part of AI-powered formatting: upload any CV — PDF, DOCX, LinkedIn export, even a scan — and it is parsed, redacted, and rendered into your branded blind template in about 60 seconds, at $0.99 per CV. Identifying details are removed by the same engine every time, so the fiftieth blind CV of the month is redacted to exactly the same standard as the first, and one source CV can produce both a full version and a blind version without duplicate work.
Every plan includes unlimited branded templates (so blind and full templates can differ per client), GDPR-compliant processing with EU data residency and signed DPAs, and an audit log recording who generated which document — useful when a client asks you to evidence your anonymisation process. See CV anonymisation for the feature in detail, or read our guide to AI-powered CV formatting for how the parsing and templating works. The 30-day free trial needs no credit card: run a real CV through it next to your manual redaction and compare.