The studio came first. The writing followed.
Elite Executive Career Solutions began with a CV its founder had to put together herself, because in 2016 she could find nobody to do it properly. The practice started where her own solution had, with design: for almost two years it laid out other people’s words before it wrote any of its own. It is why a document that leaves here arrives finished rather than as a file for somebody else to tidy up.
Nine years on, the practice positions senior leaders, boards and organisations in 38 countries. The writing carries the argument. The studio makes sure a busy reader gets to the end of it.
Almost two years of design, before a word was written
It began with one person’s CV, and with the discovery that the help she needed did not exist. What she found instead decided where the practice would start.
In 2016 the founder resigned from a corporate role she had held for more than nine years, without yet knowing what would come next. The first practical thought was the obvious one. Whatever the next move turned out to be, it would need a current CV.
That proved harder than it sounded. Nine years inside one organisation leaves you knowing exactly what you’ve done and what you’ve achieved, and with very little idea how to present any of it to somebody outside. What she wanted was someone who could take that record and position it properly. She looked, and kept looking, and found nobody doing it.
So she wrote the content herself, which solved half the problem. The other half was the document, still in the long, dense format that anyone who built a career in that era will remember without affection. A friend who ran a digital agency, one that worked only for corporate clients, agreed to design it as a favour. The result was outstanding, and it prompted a simple thought: if she needed this, she could not be the only one. That was the beginning of Elite CV.
The practice started where her own solution had, with design. For almost two years the studio laid out content that clients brought to it, and learned the ordinary disciplines of a page that has to be read quickly by somebody who does not want to read it. Where the eye lands first. What a second page costs you. Why a two-column layout that looks elegant on screen can lose half its meaning in an applicant tracking system.
The writing followed, and with it the thing the founder had gone looking for in 2016 and never found: somebody who could take a long record and build a case from it. That is still the whole of the work. Content and form are treated as one job, not two, so a client receives a document written and designed to the same standard, in Word and in PDF, ready to send. Where a client already has their own design team or provider, writing-only is offered as a normal way to buy rather than as a fallback.
A premium CV consultancy
Established in December 2016 as a design studio, laying out CVs for clients who wanted their record to look as good as it read. Trading began in February 2017. By the end of the period, the practice was writing them as well.
Global growth
The client base grows well beyond South Africa, towards the 38 countries across five continents it spans today.
Service packages
The executive work is shaped into defined packages, so a senior client can see exactly what an engagement includes, and what it costs, before committing.
The limits of scale
Demand from professionals at every level outgrows a process built entirely around bespoke work. The question becomes how to serve everyone well without diluting the senior work.
Smart CV
An AI-powered CV platform for rising professionals, built on the same positioning framework, so the bespoke practice can concentrate on senior leaders.
Hybrid career services
The rebrand to Elite Executive Career Solutions, and three divisions under one name: bespoke work for senior leaders and for organisations, and a platform for rising professionals.
On the change of name
The practice traded as Elite CV for most of its life. That name described a document, and by the time the work had grown into board packs, positioning strategy, tender documentation and corporate profiles, it described only one part of what was actually being produced. The rebrand in 2026 fixed the description, separated the executive practice from the self-service product, and changed nothing about who does the work or how it is done.
One practice, three ways in
The three divisions exist because a group chief executive, a procurement officer preparing a bid, and a professional six years into their career are not the same buyer and should not be sold to as though they were. Each door leads somewhere built for the person behind it.
Executive Solutions
For senior leaders acting on their own behalf. Executive CVs and cover letters, LinkedIn optimisation, biographies, leadership and career portfolios, board packs, positioning strategy, role suitability analysis and interview preparation. Prices published, ordered online, with a consultant available before you decide.
Executive Solutions →Corporate Solutions
For organisations. Corporate branding, executive branding and leadership positioning, tender and proposal documentation, consultant and specialist profiles, workforce transition support, and website design and development. Every engagement scoped and quoted before any work begins.
Corporate Solutions →Smart CV
For rising professionals. The same positioning framework, engineered into a platform you drive yourself: a structured CV and cover letter produced in minutes, with a free ATS scan that needs no sign-up. Pay once, no subscription.
Smart CV →Four decisions that shape everything we deliver
None of these are unusual in themselves. Taken together they explain why the process looks the way it does, and why it is slower at the start than most people expect.
Positioning before drafting
Every engagement runs on the Executive Career Positioning Suite™, which decides what the argument is before anybody starts writing it. Where you are going, what the market there rewards, which parts of a long record matter and which quietly work against you. The document follows from that. It is never the starting point.
Written intake, not a scheduled call
A detailed intake questionnaire replaces the telephone consultation. Senior people answer better when they can think, and clients across a dozen time zones should not be negotiating diaries. A telephone consultation with a dedicated consultant is available on request. Turnaround begins when the intake comes back, not when you order.
Consultants talk, writers write
Every conversation is handled by a consultant, and writers are never client-facing. It keeps the person answering you free to answer properly, and it keeps the person working on your documents working on them. Every executive engagement is Written by a Professional, from a completed intake and an agreed strategy.
Designed in house, to the market it is going to
The studio sets every document. Nothing goes out as raw text for somebody else to finish, and the layout is chosen against where the document is actually going, including how it behaves when a screening system reads it before a person does.
Four things this practice will not do
Worth stating plainly, because each one costs us business occasionally and each one is the reason clients send other clients.
We will not promise you an outcome
No firm can guarantee an interview, an offer, a role or a rise in salary, and any that does is either guessing or selling. What we control is how well your case is made. Clients tell their own outcome stories in their own words, and we do not turn those into claims of ours.
We will not show your work, or name you
Client identities are never disclosed and client documents are never displayed, blurred or otherwise. Every reference anywhere on this site carries role, sector and country only. An NDA is available on request and can be signed before you send anything.
We will not place you anywhere
This is not a recruitment or search firm and nothing is submitted on your behalf. We position you so the people who do run those processes can see what you are for. Keeping that line clean is what lets us tell you the truth about your material.
We will not take work we are wrong for
Ask a consultant before you buy and you will be told plainly if a service does not fit your situation, or if the thing you actually need is smaller and cheaper than the thing you were about to order. Since 2017, most new clients have arrived because somebody sent them, which only happens if that habit holds.
A document is written for the market it is going to
A CV that performs in Johannesburg can quietly fail in London, and one built for London can look thin in Dubai. The conventions differ on length, on structure, on what personal detail belongs on the page and on what a reader expects to see first.
The base is South Africa, and the practice has worked with clients in 38 countries across five continents. The concentrations are the United Kingdom, the United States, the United Arab Emirates and the wider Middle East, the rest of Africa and Europe.
That range is not a boast about travel. It is the reason the studio holds more than one house standard rather than one template applied everywhere. Before anything is written, the target market is settled, because it governs length, register, structure and whether a photograph belongs on the page at all.
It is also why the written intake earns its place. Clients spread across time zones and full diaries are better served by a questionnaire they can answer properly at eleven at night than by a call that three people have to move twice.