What is a spec CV, and does speculative outreach still work?
A spec CV, or spec-out, is sending a strong candidate's profile to a company that has not advertised a role, on the argument that this person is worth a conversation regardless. It still works, but the hit rate depends almost entirely on relevance: the right candidate to the right hiring manager with a specific reason, rather than a good CV sent widely.
The mechanic is old and the logic is sound. A hiring manager who was not actively recruiting will still take a meeting for someone genuinely strong in their field, particularly when the alternative is opening a search in three months and paying a fee anyway.
What has changed is tolerance. Inboxes are fuller and a generic spec-out is deleted on sight, which means volume is no longer the lever. One well-aimed approach to a manager whose team is visibly growing will beat fifty sent to a list.
That makes targeting the actual work. The signals that matter are the boring ones: a company that has just raised, a team that has posted three similar roles, a competitor that has just lost someone senior. Those are findable, and they turn a speculative approach into a specific one.
One caution worth stating. Spec-outs go to the person who owns the problem, not to HR, and never to a client where a colleague already has a live conversation. The second is a good reason to have outreach visible across the desk rather than sitting in individual inboxes.