Beyond the CV: Why This Matters to Me – and Why Amy Was Always the Person to Lead It

Beyond the CV started with a job advert. One very flexible, remote job. And 121 applications in 24 hours. All from military spouses.

I knew military spouse employment was difficult. I've spent enough of my life around the Armed Forces community to understand the reality of postings, deployments, childcare, living miles away from family and trying to build a career around a life that doesn't always belong entirely to you.

But 121 applications stopped me in my tracks. Because these weren't 121 people looking for something to fill a few hours.

They were experienced, capable, ambitious people with careers, qualifications and huge amounts to offer.

And so many of them were effectively saying the same thing:

“I just need someone to give me a chance to do this differently.”

That bothered me.

Actually, it did more than bother me.

It made me want to do something about it.

Why this is personal to me

My day job is property law.

I've worked in conveyancing for more than 25 years and now run my own team, with a particular specialism in supporting Armed Forces personnel and their families through the home-buying process.

But my connection to the military didn't start with my career.

Long before I started talking professionally about Forces Help to Buy, military moves or the particular challenges Armed Forces families can face when buying a home, I was living alongside military life.

My husband Ashley is a veteran. We met before he joined the Army, so I spent years being the person attached to the person serving.

I know what it means when the Army has other plans. I know that your family calendar isn't always yours. I know that sometimes one person's career automatically becomes the fixed point and everyone else's has to bend around it.

And I also know how easily the person standing beside the serving member can disappear into the background.

That's probably why those 121 applications affected me quite as much as they did.

Because I wasn't just looking at CVs.

I knew some of the lives sitting behind them.

We talk, quite rightly, about helping service leavers translate their military skills into civilian employment. We tell employers to look beyond rank and job title and recognise leadership, resilience, adaptability and transferable skills. But I started wondering:

Why aren't we doing the same thing for the people beside them?

Military spouses have adapted too. They've relocated. Started again. Built new networks. Managed homes through deployments. Solo parented. Changed jobs. Left jobs.

Taken work below their experience level because it was the only thing that fitted.

Explained another employment gap. And somehow kept everything moving.

Yet on a traditional CV, some of that can look like inconsistency. I think it looks like evidence.

And then there was Amy

Amy Lovely was one of those 121 applicants. I advertised an admin role. And technically, that's what she joined me to do.That feels slightly ridiculous now.

Because since joining us, Amy has become my PA, got involved in social media, helped with website design, thrown herself into Beyond the CV, started looking at conveyancing training and generally demonstrated that putting her into one little job-description-shaped box would have been a complete waste.

And that is almost the perfect example of why Beyond the CV needs to exist. I didn't magically give Amy those abilities.

She already had them.

They just weren't necessarily obvious from an application for a flexible admin job.

Give someone the flexibility to work around their life.

Trust them. Notice what they're good at. Give them room to try something. And sometimes you discover you've recruited far more than the job title you advertised for.

Which brings me to why Amy heading Beyond the CV made perfect sense.

It couldn't just be me talking

I can advocate. I can shout about this issue.

I can use my network, talk to employers and ask awkward questions about why we still judge careers by whether somebody followed a perfectly straight line. But Beyond the CV shouldn't be built around me.

And it certainly shouldn't be a lawyer standing on the sidelines telling military spouses what they need.

Amy lives it. She's a mum of four. She's a military wife. She's navigated deployments, solo parenting, moving, different working hours and being away from the support network many families take for granted.

She knows what it's like to want a career and also need that career to fit around a life you don't have complete control over. More importantly, she understands what we're trying to build because she is part of the reason we're building it.

So when it came to deciding who should head Beyond the CV, there wasn't really a decision to make.

It had to be Amy.

Beyond the CV isn't about charity

This bit is really important to me.

I don't want employers to hire military spouses because they feel sorry for them.

Please don't. This isn't about sympathy. And it isn't about asking businesses to lower their standards.

It's almost the opposite.

We're asking employers to look harder. Look beyond the employment gaps. Beyond the postcode changes. Beyond the roles that don't appear to follow a neat career trajectory. Beyond the person who has changed industries three times because their partner was posted somewhere new.

Ask what they learned. Ask what they can do. Ask what they've managed. Ask what they could become in an organisation that gives them the opportunity to stay.

Because that CV might not tell you that you're looking at someone who can adapt at incredibly short notice, learn quickly, build relationships from scratch and keep going when Plan A disappeared three postings ago.

121 applications became something much bigger

I could have filled the role, thanked everyone else for applying and carried on with my day. Instead, I couldn't stop thinking about the other 120.

How many other jobs were they applying for?

How many times had they been overlooked?

How much talent was sitting there simply because traditional employment wasn't designed around the reality of military life?

I can't employ 121 people. But maybe we can help change the conversation for far more than 121.

Because sometimes the person applying for your admin role isn't just an administrator.

Sometimes she's your future PA. Your social media person. Your website designer. Your next trainee. And, if you're really lucky...

She might just be the person you trust to head the whole bloody campaign. Amy was.

And I can't think of anyone better to help me build what comes next.