How to find and remove your CV online

Then when a recruiter contacts you, most people don’t realise that their CV is online and start to worry that their employer will see. If you find yourself in this situation, don’t worry or panic!

What you need to do is to check your CV visibility by reviewing your privacy settings in your job board account. Some job boards will enable employers / recruiters to find you by searching for keywords that will appear in your CV. If you don’t want to be found, you can switch to private visibility. You just need to access your account and set your account to private.

Here’s some advice on what to do and how to remove your details from the job board immediately.

How to remove your CV from a job board

How to ensure your CV isn’t visible on Reed

1. Sign in to your account
2. Select your Profile and then click on CV
3. Ensure your CV Visibility is off by ensuring the toggle is set to ‘No’

How to hide your CV on CV Library

1. Sign in to your account
2. Go to your profile
3. Select delete
4. You will need to enter your password to authorise the deletion

How to ensure your CV isn’t searchable on Totaljobs

1. Sign in to your account
2. Go to ‘my profile’
3. Go to ‘profile privacy options’
4. Select ‘not searchable’
5. Save

How to hide your CV on Indeed

To find out if your CV is on Indeed, you can follow these steps:

1. Go to the Indeed website and log in to your account.
2. Click on the person icon in the top right-hand corner and select “Profile” from the dropdown menu.
3. There will be two ways a CV is showing. Either you have uploaded one or you have created an Indeed CV.
4. Under the CV section you will see if the Indeed CV is visible.
5. If your CV is visible, you will see a green button that says “Public.” If your CV is not visible, you will see a grey button that says “Private.”
6. If your CV is public, you can click on the “Edit” button to make it private or delete it entirely. If your CV is already private and you want to delete it, you can click on the “Delete” button.
7. If you have manually uploaded a CV you can also delete this by clicking on the “Edit” button and selecting “Delete”.
8. You should also be aware of your Privacy settings. You may be subscribed to receive calls from employers using Indeed. Go to your settings and then Privacy settings. Scroll to the bottom of the page and there you will see if you are subscribed to receive calls from Indeed and employers from Indeed. Click the Unsubscribe button if you don’t want to receive calls.

If you cannot find your CV on Indeed or you believe that someone else has created a CV using your information, you can contact Indeed’s customer service to request that it be removed.

How to remove your CV from LinkedIn

Did you know your LinkedIn profile stores your CV? You may have added your CV when setting up your account or added it to your profile many years ago and forgotten. To access your CV on your LinkedIn profile:

1. Go to your profile
2. Click Settings and Privacy
3. Find Data Privacy
4. Click Job seeking preferences
5. Click ‘Change’ under Job application settings
6. This is where you can remove and/or upload your newest CV

How to find your CV on the internet

We highly recommend doing a thorough review of where your CV is online. If you were looking for a new job a few years ago, you may have forgotten where exactly your old CV is published on the internet and it’s best that only the most up to date version is available and the old version is removed entirely.

Whether you want to remove an old version of your CV, replace it with a new one, ensure it’s not accessible to anyone, or just remove it altogether, the best place to start is by Googling your name and something else that will be on an old CV, such as a previous employer.

Another way to find where your CV is online is by checking your emails. You would have received a confirmation email when initially creating an account on a website. If you’re still struggling to find it, or want to ensure you have double checked everywhere, then you can search all the usual places by trying to log in to a job board to see if you have an account registered with them. 

Once you’re able to log in to your account, you will be able to delete your CV by accessing your personal profile and finding the option to delete or hide the CV. If you’re struggling to find it, you can always contact them directly to assist. However, if you want to be thorough, you might prefer to delete your account altogether, so that everything is removed.

If you decide to keep your account, you will need to review your settings. For example, some job boards give the option to change your account preferences to ‘not searchable’ in your privacy options.

CV visibility

If you are actively job hunting, this visibility can benefit you as recruiters /employers can then find you for a relevant role that you may not have come across. To be found for the most relevant roles, you will want to ensure you include buzzwords for your role in your CV so recruiters /employers can find you.

If you want to remove your CV to update it with a new one, there are plenty of websites that you can use to post your CV to for companies and recruiters to find you. A good tip when doing this is to make a note of every website you post it on, so that you know where to look in future.