How much detail should you put on your CV?

Posted on February 24, 2015 at 12:15 pm

When composing your CV it can be hard to know exactly how much information you should put on it. It can be tempting to fill it with as much info as possible but the problem with this is that if a potential employer has a large pile of CVs to look through and yours is five pages long you can almost guarantee that they won’t bother reading the majority of the content. The general rule of thumb is to not exceed two sides of A4 paper.

The basic idea of your CV is to get a potential employer intrigued, give them some content that they will find relevant to their industry and only give the basic information with a view to discussing points on your CV at an interview.

I personally have always found the use of bullet points very effective when describing previous responsibilities in jobs that I have had before. These keep the facts short and to the point and allow the potential employer to scan read to quickly gain the information that they need.

Posted in CV Guide