Screen a contractor CV on whether each contract delivered and ended cleanly, not on how long each role lasted. A permanent CV is judged on stability, and a contractor CV is judged on repeatability: the same kind of work, in the same kind of environment, finished on time. If you apply a permanent-style "job-hopper" filter to contractors, you'll reject some of your best candidates.

It's Monday morning and the client wants an interim finance transformation lead starting in three weeks. Sixty CVs are in, and the first ten you open each show a string of six- and nine-month engagements. Your gut says "unstable". Your brief says the opposite: the client wants someone who can land fast and leave a finished project behind.

Why the permanent playbook misfires

Most screening habits come from permanent desks. Tenure under two years, a gap between roles, three employers in four years: each one nudges a permanent candidate down the pile. For contractors, those same patterns are simply how the market works.

Take a contractor who has worked six-month contracts for six years. That's twelve roles on the CV. Run a "no more than one role per two years" rule over it and they fail on paper, even though they may have been extended at every client. The rule penalises the very thing that makes them good at the job.

Fatigue makes it worse. By CV 40 you're pattern-matching on date ranges instead of reading, and a rule you'd never apply consciously starts running in the background. The opposite risk is real too: some contractors do have a pattern worth probing, such as repeated early exits or contracts that end in the first month. Raw tenure can't separate the two. You need different signals.

What to check instead

Replace tenure with five checks. Each one can be written into your criteria before you open the pile.

1. Contract-end reasons. Look for fixed-term completion, project delivery or a budget cycle ending, and for extensions or repeat engagements with the same client. Be wary of several contracts ending within weeks of the start, or unexplained endings clustered together. The CV won't always say, so treat unclear endings as a question for the call, not a rejection.

2. Sector consistency. A contractor who has done regulatory remediation in three banks has a stronger story than one who has dipped into six unrelated sectors. Check that the contracts build on each other in skill and seniority.

3. Day-rate history. Rates that hold or rise across contracts suggest clients are paying for the skills. A rate that falls sharply may signal a harder market or a change of direction, and it tells you early whether the client's budget is realistic. Most CVs don't list rates, so this is usually something you collect at registration, not something you read off the page.

4. Notice and availability. For an interim role, availability is part of the match. A candidate with an excellent record who can't start for three months may not fit a three-week brief. Capture the notice period or end date of their current contract up front.

5. IR35 and right-to-work basics. Check right to work before anything else, because it's a legal requirement and not a preference. For UK roles, also note whether the candidate has worked inside or outside IR35 and how they're engaged: limited company, umbrella or PAYE. Status depends on the specific role and the client's assessment, so don't treat past engagements as a guarantee. What you're checking is that the candidate's usual setup fits the way this role will be run.

Setting it up so short stints don't sink the score

Whether you screen by hand or with software, the fix is the same: decide what matters before the CVs arrive, and stop tenure from counting against contractors.

  1. Split your criteria into must-haves and hard facts. Skills, sector experience and seniority go in the scored section. Right to work, availability and rate expectations are pass/fail checks, not weighted points.
  2. Remove or neutralise tenure. If your template includes average time in role, switch it off for contract roles. Replace it with "completed contracts in a relevant sector" or "repeat or extended engagements".
  3. Write the brief in skills, not years. A clear, skills-first description gives you something to score against. Our job description templates are a useful starting point, and the guide to how skills-based CV screening works explains why matching on skills is fairer to non-linear careers.
  4. Treat gaps between contracts as normal. A few weeks between engagements is typical. For longer breaks, our piece on screening CVs with employment gaps fairly covers how to handle them consistently.

If you use a tool for the first pass, this is where CV Matcher fits: you set the skills and sector requirements for the contract, and it scores each CV against them, so a run of short engagements isn't treated as a weakness. You can Start Free Trial and test it on your next interim brief. Whatever you use, check the top and bottom of the ranking yourself before you trust it.

The human layer

No score tells you why a contract ended. A ten-minute qualification call does. Ask what the client wanted delivered, what was handed over, and whether they'd be taken back. A candidate who answers specifically and without defensiveness is usually telling the truth.

The call is also where you test the things a CV can't show:

Your client relationship also matters here. You know whether this client forgives a candidate who left early or won't touch one. A scoring system doesn't.

Your first step on Monday

Before the next contract or interim brief, take ten minutes to rewrite your screening criteria. Delete any tenure rule. Add the five checks above, with right to work, availability and rate as pass/fail. Then screen the first twenty CVs against the new version and notice who you would previously have rejected on dates alone. If strong candidates are surfacing that your old process would have missed, you have your answer on whether to keep the new criteria.