As skills become easier to acquire, augment and replicate, perhaps competitive advantage will depend increasingly on something CVs barely capture: the direction in which people are growing.

I have read thousands of CVs.

I have hired people, negotiated contracts and sat on the other side of the table deciding who should get the job.

Later, as a career coach, I helped people write better CVs.

So yes, I believe in them.

If I am hiring a pilot, I would quite like evidence that they know how to land the plane. If I need surgery, I remain similarly old-fashioned about medical qualifications.

Competence matters.

But after years of reading CVs, I noticed something curious.

The strongest CV was not always attached to the person who ultimately created the greatest value. And some of the most interesting people had surprisingly ordinary CVs.

For a long time, I thought of this simply as the difference between qualifications and the human being behind them.

I now think there may be something more strategic going on.

Companies spend enormous amounts of money trying to build sustainable competitive advantage: capabilities, knowledge and ways of working that competitors cannot easily reproduce.

But many traditional sources of advantage are becoming easier to access.

Technology diffuses. Processes are benchmarked. Expertise can be hired.

And AI can increasingly augment or reproduce parts of professional output: analysis, research, translation, coding, writing and presentation-building.

Skills still matter enormously.

But if skills become progressively easier to acquire, augment or buy, another question becomes interesting:

What becomes more valuable when competence becomes more abundant?

I wonder whether part of the answer lies in something we rarely capture on a CV:

Trajectory.

Not potential. Trajectory.

Potential asks: How capable could this person become?

Trajectory asks: In which direction is this person already moving - without anyone having to push?

That distinction matters.

A CV is an inventory of accumulated capability.

Trajectory is a vector.

It tells us not only where someone has been, but where their curiosity, energy and voluntary effort are already taking them.

And unlike an individual skill, that intrinsic direction of growth is remarkably difficult to manufacture, mandate or copy.

"A CV is an inventory. Trajectory is a vector."

Would I hire from a wish list?

Of course not. I have not completely abandoned civilisation.

But would I hire from a conventional CV alone?

I am increasingly unconvinced.

Perhaps recruitment needs to answer three questions rather than one:

1. What has this person learned? - Competence

2. Who are they now? - Character and judgement

3. Where are they already heading? - Trajectory

Somewhere between those three lives the person we are actually hiring.

And as machines become increasingly capable of reproducing parts of our professional output, understanding the direction in which humans themselves are developing may become one of the more interesting sources of competitive advantage left.

What are you moving towards?

Trajectory may be visible in surprisingly ordinary things.

What still fascinates you?

What do you learn when nobody asks you to?

What are you curious enough to be bad at?

What happens when your existing expertise stops being enough?

Can you ask a question that changes somebody else's question?

What are you slightly embarrassed to admit you are excited about?

What gives you energy?

And, perhaps more importantly than we usually admit, what kind of energy do you bring into a room?

These things are difficult to capture in a conventional CV. Yet they may tell us something important about the value a person will create three or five years from now.

My accidental experiment

Just before my 60th birthday, my family asked for my wish list. When I finished it, I realised something slightly unsettling. It described me better than my CV.

Books other people think I should read.

Chinese.

Spanish.

Stand-up comedy.

Learning to ask better questions.

Technology and culture in China.

HYROX.

Japan, Spain, Africa, the Lofoten Islands and the Seychelles again.

Building my little AI baby, Zibba.

And possibly, one day, a via ferrata — although at present my enthusiasm remains somewhat more developed than my courage.

None of this belongs under Professional Experience. Fortunately. But collectively, these wishes reveal something my formal CV does not.

They reveal direction. What still pulls me forward. What I voluntarily learn. What I am willing to be a beginner at. What I am curious enough to fail at. What I want to understand next.

My CV describes accumulated capability.

My wish list reveals something about future momentum.

The missing page

That made me wonder whether the CV of the future needs another page. Not another page of certifications. Not another carefully optimised inventory of competencies.

Something that captures trajectory.

A wish list is obviously an imperfect instrument. I am not proposing that recruiters begin demanding candidates' birthday lists alongside their references. HR departments have enough problems.

But the underlying question may be useful: What is this person moving towards?

Because when organisations hire, they are not buying a fixed bundle of functions. They are entering a relationship with a human being.

That person will learn, change, become bored, become energised, influence others, respond to uncertainty, challenge assumptions, adapt, contribute and occasionally surprise everyone.

We already recognise much of this in sophisticated recruitment. Good organisations assess motivation, values, judgement, learning agility, leadership potential and cultural contribution alongside technical qualifications.

Trajectory may offer another lens. It asks us not simply whether someone possesses desirable qualities today, but where those qualities are already taking them.

From human resources to strategic resources

This brings us back to competitive advantage. Companies can train skills. They can buy expertise. They can provide better technology. They can redesign processes. Increasingly, they can give employees AI tools that dramatically extend individual capability.

But intrinsic direction is different. You cannot manufacture genuine curiosity on command. You cannot mandate fascination. You cannot tell someone to become deeply interested in something and expect Tuesday afternoon to be convenient. And you cannot easily reproduce the particular combination of curiosity, experience, judgement, motivation and interests that determines where an individual goes next.

Perhaps that makes trajectory a more interesting strategic resource than we have traditionally assumed. Not instead of competence. On top of it. Competence remains the entrance ticket.

But once a reasonable threshold has been reached, qualities such as judgement, curiosity, integrity, learning agility, self-awareness, resilience, humour and the ability to remain interested may determine what happens next.

Some of these qualities are difficult to measure.

That does not make them unimportant.

It makes them inconvenient.

"My CV describes accumulated capability. My wish list reveals future momentum."

"You can train a skill. You cannot mandate fascination."

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