August 24, 2026 · 5 min read

Can Employers See Your File's Metadata? (What Your CV Reveals)

The CV, portfolio or document you send carries hidden metadata — your real name, edit history and more. Here's what recipients can see and how to strip it.

Every Word document and PDF you send carries hidden metadata, and anyone who receives the file can read it in a couple of clicks. Most recipients never look — but some do, and in a few situations it genuinely matters. Here's what's actually in there.

What a document quietly carries

• Author name: usually the name configured on the computer that created it — which may be your full legal name, or someone else's if you reused a template.
• Company field: often filled in automatically, sometimes with a previous employer's name.
• Timestamps: when it was created, and when it was last edited — including whether you wrote it in twenty minutes at midnight.
• Last modified by: the account that last saved it.
• Software and template paths: occasionally including folder names from your computer.

When this actually matters

• Anonymous or blind applications: some processes strip names deliberately — and the file metadata puts yours straight back in.
• Reused templates: if you built your CV from a friend's or a previous employer's file, their name can still be embedded in the author field.
• Client and freelance work: a deliverable that carries the name of a different client's project is an awkward look.
• Photos in a portfolio: image files can also carry GPS coordinates showing exactly where a shot was taken.

How to strip it before you send

• Drop your PDF, Word or PowerPoint file into Skrubly's Metadata Cleaner.
• It shows you the embedded author and document data.
• Click Clean and send the stripped copy instead — the file is processed in your browser and never uploaded.

One thing worth saying

Cleaning metadata is about not oversharing incidental details — your home address in a photo, an old employer's name in a template field. It isn't a way to misrepresent who did the work. Keep the content honest; just don't let the file leak things you never meant to send.