Why You Should Ignore People Who Say Keep Your Resume Short
You’re looking for a new job and it’s time to update your CV with all the experience you’ve garnered from your previous (or current) employer. But how long is too long? How can you touch on all of your skills, experience, and personal branding efforts in one brief, concise package?
Well, the simple answer is that you shouldn’t.
Many people have been conditioned to believe that a CV should only be one or two pages, and they sacrifice essential details to keep it down to that. However, in a competitive labour market now heavily influenced by technology, it doesn’t serve you to be selective about your skills, especially to a point where you might be leaving out crucial capabilities. While there is still a limit, and being overly verbose might not help you either, here are a few reasons why embracing the extra pages will add further value to your CV.
Adapting to the Digital Landscape
In the information age, there’s a lot of focus on being concise. In a world of 140-character tweets and shortened-down text language, we often place value on who can do things the fastest, or the most efficiently. With the advent of online job postings attracting thousands of applications, candidates often build their CVs with the goal of catching the eye rather than including key information for the role.
The issue with this thinking is that when an experienced and skilled recruiter sees your (admittedly eye-catching!) CV, they may well still dismiss it, as it isn’t focussed on selling your skills for the role. A cursory glance of your responsibilities doesn’t tell us who you are, what your role required of you, and what contribution you made to your previous employer. As a recruiter myself, I much prefer to receive a CV that is three or four pages if it gives me an overview of the experience and qualifications you have, rather than a one-page CV that might be easier to read. And take it from me, when I see those CV’s I call them within 2 minutes of opening the resume.
On a practical note, most recruiters today utilise pre-screening software to target specific phrases or keywords in your CV that correlate with the position you’re applying for. Often, an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) will scan your CV, looking for various keywords and phrases. If you submit a more detailed CV, it will allow you to load in more pertinent experience, phrases and keywords. This will boost your chances of ranking higher than the competition and landing in the hands of a recruiter.
Good Recruiters Want to Know It All
The Australian job market can be crowded and competitive. If recruiters are to consider your application, they need to see a comprehensive history of achievements and how you’ve evolved from where your career started, so they can ascertain how your career journey qualifies you to do the role you are applying for. With that said, it’s impossible to successfully summarise a long or varied career on a single page, or even two. Despite this though, we’re still hearing a lot of people in the market say that they’ve been advised to keep their CVs short, whether that’s by a recruiter, learned friends, “professional resume writers” or from articles and discussion online.
Accurate information that is verifiable and pertinent to the position you are applying for is the cornerstone of a successful CV. If you have 20 years of experience relating to the role you are seeking a high paying position, then it is essential that your experience and qualifications are listed and can be validated. Even if the CV goes beyond four pages, this is the kind of information that gives a recruiter an idea about where you come from, what you can do, and how you’ve added value to your company. For those in higher level roles, that may well be up to six pages – don’t be afraid to use them.
The same goes for having multiple different positions in one company. While you may think it’s best to put them all under one umbrella, not showing how you’ve progressed within the company and how you showcased the different skills that each role required, can be a misstep. Candidates who can show progression in their employment history and having been noticed and promoted within other employers makes you of much more interest to future ones.
If you’re looking to move fields, tailoring your CV to emphasise the aspects of your career that are directly relevant might need more space. It’s recommended not to bypass any related roles you have had, as gaps in your history will ring alarm bells. Provide the relevant details (there is nothing wrong with using bullet points to list unrelated roles or positions that are a long time ago to complete the chronology) and accentuate your transferable skills that are in demand across industries, along with any education and training you’ve had that is relevant to your desired role. With your CV being entered into a database, it could mean it will be searched for currently available positions as well as future ones. So, the more relevant detail, the greater the opportunity to land the position you want.
Having a Readable Format
While short CVs are generally designed to be eye-catching and easy to digest, it’s always tempting to start cramming the necessary information into the small space available. Keep in mind that having excessively cramped paragraphs is one of the easiest ways to repel a reader, and will make your CV look disorganised – the exact opposite reason you wanted a short CV in the first place! Stretching out this information over multiple pages is far easier to read, and thus easier to understand, making it more likely for you to be noticed.
There are also a few basic pointers to take heed of here, like choosing a readable font and size, making your margins comfortable, using bullet points and concise sentences, and maintaining a balance of white space and text. There are countless articles on putting a CV together (including our own), but the crucial point is not to constraint the information you need to get across to a single page. Why sacrifice readability or key information just to conform to an arbitrary rule about length?
Summary
In short, your CV should be whatever length required to give an in-depth and worthy account of your career history, qualifications and achievements – it should tell your story. Add in the extra pages, defy the misguided one-page CV advice and you will soon be on your way to securing the role you covet, even with the ever-increasing competition. If you’d like more information on how to update your CV or how to land that next great role, speak to one of our specialists today. We look forward to partnering with you to help you take the next step in your career.