OT CV length

Am I right that any recruiter who thinks a CV should only be 2 pages
is used to dealing with crappy roles and should therefore be
discarded? Said recruiter sounded about 12 and very helpfully sent me
their in house 'how to do a CV' guide.

For reference mine is 4 pages and includes publications and conference
presentations in that. For a non research role I could chop that and
put 'available on request'. I could get it to 3 and a bit if I
squashed it but there's no way I can provide meaningful skills,
achievements and examples for a 20 plus year career in 2 pages.

 

Yes. The recruiter is an idiot.

I can't get mine much less than 4 pages, but reckon the trick is
simply to put all the really useful stuff on the front page, so people
only have to read further once they've decided you're awesome and
match whatever it is they're looking for...I use the following
approach

Page 1
Personal details

Profile
[I am awesome, you will read this and think so too.]

Key Experience
[x years Doing this thing]
[x years Doing that thing]
[x years BEING AWESOME]...etc.

Core Skills,
Being Awesome, stuff, things, geek-fu.

Page 2-3
Jobs - last 2 with a couple of paragraphs each, next 2 with just a
couple of sentences, the rest simply job titles.

Page 4
Education,
Industry certifications,
References.

 

Sounds spotty dog to me

 

Rules are made to be broken...

I have 10 or 15 pages just for publications[1] (who counts conference
presentations if there's not an associated refereed publication?). I may
have to cut it all down to two pages in the new year... :-(

[1] http://www.brunel.ac.uk/~eesridr/mupubs.html

--
Ivan Reid, School of Engineering & Design, _____________ CMS Collaboration,
Brunel University. Ivan.Reid@[brunel.ac.uk|cern.ch] Room 40-1-B12, CERN
GSX600F, RG250WD "You Porsche. Me pass!" DoD #484 JKLO#003, 005
WP7# 3000 LC Unit #2368 (tinlc) UKMC#00009 BOTAFOT#16 UKRMMA#7 (Hon)
KotPT -- "for stupidity above and beyond the call of duty".

 

Easy

2 to a maximum of 3

Anything over 10-15 years just needs a 1 line job/employer/date

Recent stuff 1st

Only personal detail required is "name"

Put your self on the other end, you have a pile of CVs, do you wade
through the novel or the quick hit. Remember it will be a no mark looking
for a preset list of items at the initial stage of review.

 

Disagree. I'm always looking for people who list their pastimes and
interests. Tells you a lot.

"Socialising" means "going down the pub". "Current affairs" means "I
watch Fox News".

But you do get some real ones. Ask them a bit about their
extra-curricular activities and watch them light up, and you learn a lot
about your interviewees.

 

I disagree with your disagreement!

By all means ask people about interests at an interview, but it has no
place on a CV.

 

Besides, putting stuff like downloading porn and shouting at Twitter
feeds on one's CV might not go down too well.

 

Why not? I've never thought that a CV should be 100% work-related.
Somebody may be amazingly competent at the task but utterly impossible
to work with (or even be near), and you want to know if they'll fit in
with the rest of the crew. A bit of extra-curricular info helps.

I was always told to shove personal interests on a CV. Mind you, that
was over 30 years ago, so I daresay it's a generational thing.

 

But I've never shouted at a Twitter feed!

Although I do have to make sure I ignore anything posted on Facebook
from ogden on a Saturday night these days. Oh, and Sundays now.

 

As I said, I think that is something that can be sorted out at
interview. These days, when hundreds of CVs will turn up for one job,
the important things like skills & experience should be enough to
whittle them down to a shortlist, not something about whether the
candidates are pig fanciers, morris dancers or real-ale buffs.

I think people who struggle to get their CV up to a page in length
might want to pad it out with that stuff, but as this thread shows,
there are plenty of people, including me, who struggle to keep it down
to three or four pages. Putting personal details & interests on there
are just irrelevant fluff.

 

But if, of those hundreds of CVs, the majority fit the hard requirements
for skills and experience...

 

Then pick X at random, where X is the number you can realistically
interview. Or use some other criterion such as exam passes. I don't
think "interests" is a valid one and so it wouldn't matter if interests
were on the CV or not.

FWIW, many years ago I worked at a company where they literally did get
hundreds of CVs per job. Every candidate was a recent a graduate as
the jobs were invariably offered during the milk rounds.

The boss firstly went through every CV, picking out all the Oxbridge
ones. If there were enough of those, he didn't bother looking at any
of the others.

 

You appear to have written the last issue of the Journal of
Instrumentation on your own.

 

Then you tighten the requirements. The NHS, at least my bit of it, had
scoring systems for shortlisting and for interview. Both contained
criteria to be met (chosen by you) that were either essential or
desirable. At interview you could legitimately look for evidence of a
well-rounded personality, but not for shortlisting purposes.

I must admit I was against the idea at first, on the basis that I was
already an experinced interviewer. I found in practice, however, that
you still always got the candidate you wanted, but it forced you to
examine exactly why you wanted them.

 

The boss firstly went through every CV, picking out all the Oxbridge
ones. If there were enough of those, he didn't bother looking at any
of the others.
[/QUOTE]

You never can tell:

I knew a guy, possibly one of the best real time software people going.
He had a lot of experience and a first class honours degree. But he
never put in what. When I asked him he coughed and said "Music".


I also know a guy who heads up a lot of major aerospace programs who
confessed while drunk, that he only had 2 A levels and had flunked the
first year of the degree and made it up to get the first real job. He
then felt he couldn't take it off of his CV.

And again a son of a friend of mine got a degree in management from
"Oxbridge ?" and no one would offer him a job as the manager of their
company. I know he did a spell working behind the counter at McDs.

 

Who in their right minds would? At least he'll have a bit of 'real
world' work experience

 

Who in their right minds would?[/QUOTE]

That's what I said and he seemed a tad miffed about it

From watching a TV prog:

The head of Tescos came out of Uni with a management degree. Joined
Tescos and had to stack shelves and work in the warehouse for the first
two years before he was put in charge of any body.

He insists the same for anyone coming into the company without any real
experience.

 

For my current job, the second interview stage included half an hour
with one of the VPs. Mostly discussing which was best, his Ducati or my
ZX7R.

 

I did apologise in advance, Sunday last.