Missing out on job interviews due to a lengthy CV?

Candidates are often told to keep their CVs to around two-page mark to keep recruiters interested but this can be difficult when you have a long and varied career history.

1. Know what’s important

Before you start making efforts to reduce the size of your CV, it is essential to spend some time researching your target employers. If you ignore what are the in-demand skills and which are the less valuable on the market, it will be difficult to edit your CV.

Tip: Scan through a wide selection of job adverts that you might apply for and make a list of the most commonly occurring requirements in terms of experience, skills, qualifications and knowledge.

2. Shorten older roles

A common mistake that leads many candidates towards possession of a lengthy CV, is the inclusion of too much detail in dated roles.

Recruiters will spend lots of time scrutinizing your current and recent roles, but they won’t be particularly interested in work that you did five, ten or even twenty years ago.

If you have dated roles that are stretching over man lines of text, then look to start shortening them down. Older roles are only really included to give readers an idea of your background and career progression – so there’s no need for granular detail in them.

Example:

Oct 2007-Aug 2009     Company 3 | Senior Business analyst

Oct 2005-Aug 2007     Company 2 | Senior Business analyst

Oct 2002-Aug 2005     Company 1 | Analyst

3. Cut out irrelevant information

Once you have researched your employers and you understand what are the most in-demand skills, you can start to cut out some of the less relevant details. Scan through your CV profile, role descriptions, education and remove anything that may be useless to requirements.

4. Write concisely

Long-winded sentences that fail to get the point quickly, will easily push your CV onto three or four pages if you let them. Avoid overusing personal pronouns, (I did, I was etc.) cut out filler words, (just, so, very, really etc.) and try to keep your bullet points to one line or less.

Conclusion

If you are missing out on job interviews due to a lengthy CV, then try some of the above tactics to reduce its size without losing vital information.

Ideally you should try and keep your CV to around two pages in length in order to hold the attention of recruiters and hiring managers, and persuade them to invite you to interview.