The Other week, on Linkedin I mentioned a candidate asking me how long should their CV be? You can find the thread OVER ON LINKEDIN
What I am discovering with that comment and the few times in the past I have spoken about this. Is that we are trapped in old rhetoric. Such a place is that we are told CVs need to be 2 pages long.
If you look across the landscape of advice for your CV – the people suggesting that your CV needs to be 2 pages long is, well, us recruiters. And we cant give you a good reason why.
“No candidate has been rejected because their CV is longer than 2 pages”
If you send me a 4 page CV will I reject you? No. What you get rejected on, 99.99% of the time is the content of the CV.
Your CV can be as long as you want it to be. As long as the content of the CV is relevant to the job you are applying for.
AND that is the most important thing over length.
I always suggest to candidates, before applying for a role, spend about 20-30mins, reading through your CV and asking yourself the following questions –
Am I relevant for this job on paper? I know what it is like, you find a great role, get excited and hit apply. OR you are stuck in that no man’s land of applying for jobs because – well let’s face it. you need one. Where most – and I mean 98% of applications fall apart, is that the CV isn’t showing the key competencies that the job advert is asking for. Make sure it’s in there. A good example can be found here at a follow-up post I made to the above post – HERE This basically goes a little like this –
If the job advert says – We need someone that has managed projects up to £4m in a mechanical engineering setting developing products in XXXX industry.
Current opening “Trusted Manager of teams, I thrive in high pressured situations…” generalistic opener.
To – “Chartered Engineer, with a 1st in Mechanical Engineering in the XXXX Industry, where I have managed Projects of £6m developing new products….”
The relevant areas of the CV where they did this, was enhanced and gone into more detail.
Get to the point! If it can be said in fewer words that get to the point do it. This creates a conversation in the reader’s mind. “I’d like to hear more about that” it’s a bit like writing content for a blog or website. You want the reader to be wanting more. With you, you want the reader to know enough about you to invite you to an interview.
AND that is the main part about this.
You’d have written a standard CV, and saved it to a file somewhere or a job board. But is it the CV that will open the door to that interview? Because that is all a CV is. A key to opening the door to an interview.