Your client will look the candidate up. Look first.
Most hiring managers open a candidate's public profile straight after the CV. If the two disagree, the question lands on you, in front of the client, and the honest answer is that you did not look. A title that reads Head of on the CV and Manager on the profile, eight months missing between two jobs, an employer that appears on one document and not the other: none of these sinks a candidate. Being surprised by them does.
Checking by eye works for one person and fails on a shortlist of eight late in the week. This play pulls the dated work history from the profile, sets it beside the CV job by job, and shows you where the two part company.
It is a gate, like scoring a longlist against the rules your client never wrote down. That one asks whether someone fits. This one asks whether the story is consistent, and it runs last, on the people you are about to send.
What you get back
A table with one row per job: employer, title, start and end as the CV has them, the same four as the profile has them, and a mark where they differ. Below it, the gaps and the overlaps with their dates. Then the questions, one per difference, each quoting both versions, with the ones that touch the role you named at the top.
It is written for you, not for the client. Nothing in it is an accusation, and none of it should be forwarded as one.
Variations worth knowing
The whole shortlist. Hand over every CV with its profile link. Five run first, then the rest.
People you sourced here. Anyone found by turning a job spec into a ranked shortlist already carries a dated history on their row. It is reused, so the lookup is not paid for again.
The CV is in your CRM. Where the CV sits on the candidate's record in Recruit CRM or Loxo, the agent reads it from there.
Where this goes wrong
Treating a difference as a lie. Profiles go stale, people round dates, and contractors list the end client on one document and the agency on the other. Ask before you conclude anything.
Treating a match as proof. Two documents written by the same person can agree and both be wrong. This is not a reference check and it does not replace one.
A profile that lags. Someone who changed jobs last month may not have updated anything. The latest job is the one most likely to differ for innocent reasons.
Reading a gap as a verdict. A gap is a pair of dates. The reason may be health, family or care, and that is the candidate's to share, not yours to score.
