Long CVs
- Thread starter Ironic Namesake
- Start date
2 pages is great for those with minimal or no experience, or applying for a average or below national average wage job. imo.
anything that requires some real info and some decent experience, will go over 2 pages.
that said, in these type of positions, they will be expecting larger CVs
anything that requires some real info and some decent experience, will go over 2 pages.
that said, in these type of positions, they will be expecting larger CVs
when i've sifted CV's and done interviews, I find 2 pages to be about all I need to read,
In reference to those commenting on those with experience, the further back the jobs are, chances are the less relevant they are.. Always put from most recent your work experience, that way you can just not read the rest on the initial scan through if required ...
or at least, thats how i've been doing it
Oh, and whats this craze with new CV's listing skills profiles, and containing absolutely bugger all relevant content.... in the bin with yersen !
In reference to those commenting on those with experience, the further back the jobs are, chances are the less relevant they are.. Always put from most recent your work experience, that way you can just not read the rest on the initial scan through if required ...
or at least, thats how i've been doing it
Oh, and whats this craze with new CV's listing skills profiles, and containing absolutely bugger all relevant content.... in the bin with yersen !
The golden rule with CV's is to keep it short snappy and with enough information for the interviewer to ask more questions. really should be no more than around two pages/sides, too short and the new employer thinks you have not bothered and don't really want the job, too long and they get bored and lose interest.deuse said:
deuse said:
We get a lot of them like that at work. But I only work in retail so i find anyting in excess of 2 pages a bit much for shop work.
They get read if the person can successfully create the front page, if the first page is tosh then it gets binned.
I still cant believe we had some plank hand us a CV and forget to put a contact number on it.
Soldato
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A[L]C said:
Had a quick skim through, like I would do with any CV, and your skills do not seem to stand out. What I like seeing for a CV written for an IT position, is a summary table at the top, with the skills and the number of years experience you have with that particular skill.
That would allow me to quickly check if you are suitable for the role. Also, if those skills were then also made bold in the "Main activities and responsibilities" section of your CV, I can easily see where they were applied
Soldato
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jas72 said:
Just press the red button on your sky remote
You don't need more than 2 pages for a CV and possibly 3-4 pages if a detailed synopsis has been requested for a certain position by the employer.
Last year my CV was 6 pages - although there was a fair amount of blank space on it as I thought it much neater to try and not break up a section by having it span across 2 pages. Also as I rule I figured that I need to impress the prospective employer with this single document, and one way of doing that might be to show that I'm capable of writing decent summaries. I now tend to leave that for the covering letter (which looks 100x better if you can fit it on a single page, IMO).
This year I decided to give it an overhaul and it's now on 3 pages. I tried to make it fit on 2 but that really wasn't letting me emphasise my qualifications, skills and experience in the way I wanted to. An agent who has seen both the old and new said it was better and more 'snappy', he actually asked if I'd got some professional help to review it which is probably a good sign
What I would advise for younger people is that once you start getting some proper work experience (relevant to the type of roles you are applying for), start cutting out some of the 'filler' that you've had sat on there for years, like GCSE results, activities you did at school/uni etc.
When I first knocked out my CV I had all my subjects and grades listed, because that was my strength (I figured row-upon-row of As looked impressive) and I didn't have any work experience. However by last year my CV had basically bloated up to 6 pages because I was adding more and more work related stuff, but not streamlining it and clearing out the old stuff no-one cares about.
edit: out of curiousity, those with a lot of experience/skills, what font size do you use to fit it on 2 pages?
This year I decided to give it an overhaul and it's now on 3 pages. I tried to make it fit on 2 but that really wasn't letting me emphasise my qualifications, skills and experience in the way I wanted to. An agent who has seen both the old and new said it was better and more 'snappy', he actually asked if I'd got some professional help to review it which is probably a good sign
What I would advise for younger people is that once you start getting some proper work experience (relevant to the type of roles you are applying for), start cutting out some of the 'filler' that you've had sat on there for years, like GCSE results, activities you did at school/uni etc.
When I first knocked out my CV I had all my subjects and grades listed, because that was my strength (I figured row-upon-row of As looked impressive) and I didn't have any work experience. However by last year my CV had basically bloated up to 6 pages because I was adding more and more work related stuff, but not streamlining it and clearing out the old stuff no-one cares about.
edit: out of curiousity, those with a lot of experience/skills, what font size do you use to fit it on 2 pages?
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Morba said:
Not at all.
I'm an IT Manager of two years.
I've been working in the computer industry for 14 years starting in sales, moving through engineering, technical and where I am now.
Currently my CV is 2.5 pages long.
Now if I'm also asked to submit job/career/experience history after first contact then I can send a lot more.
However if you are just asked to submit a CV they are simply name gathering before they make their first cut and they cannot afford the time to read more than 2-3 pages per applicant.
I use 12pt Calibri for body text, 14pt Cambria for the main heading and 12pt Cambria for the sub-headings.HangTime said:
Calibri and Cambria are the new heading and body fonts in Office 2007. If I'm sending my CV electronically I create a PDF so that they'll see it in the way I want them to. Plus PDFs are more portable accross platforms.
I'm redoing my CV at the moment as I'm moving back to the UK soon and may need to get a higher paying job. I'd love to know how to avoid just listing skills, as that's what I've had to do to fit it all on to 2 pages. I've put education history and employment history, with my general responsibilities at each post. But at the end I've just got a table of bullet points for all the things I know.Conanius said:
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Soldato
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bakes0310 said:when i done my cv i wrote about 4 lines and still got the job
And what was the job?
Soldato
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A CV should be short, use a covering letter for anything ground-breakingly relevant. What annoys me is when applicants go into detail for every position they ever held, you only really need to list the relevant ones and then only really for your current or most recent position. By keeping you CV relevant to the job you are applying for there is no real reason why it cant be neatly kept to a single side of one sheet of A4 imo.
Who would want to read through 6 pages of drivel? If I was an employer, I would want a pile of short CVs which tell me straight away whether this person has the skills and experience needed, not whether they were county knitting champion '89.
malfunkshun said:
Possibly, but the trouble is that it may then become hard to stand out from the crowd. You've barely got enough room to list contact details, relevant experience and achievements there. I.e. no room to show qualifications, range of experience (different employers) etc. My fear is that if I limit my employment history too much, they are gonna think 'well he obviously hasn't got much experience or it would be on here'.
Think about it - companies which have their own in-house application forms usually span over several pages and capture quite a lot of info regarding employment history etc.
From my experience, quite often interviewers like to do a walk-through (to varying degrees) of your CV too. By having a reasonable amount of stuff on there it gives you an opportunity to lead the interview in the direction you want, rather than them thinking up awkward questions to ask you because they don't have anything to go on.