One of the best things you can do for your resume / CV is to keep it simple – write concisely, write less.
Too often we see resumes with 3 or 4 pages, explanations of every responsibility they have ever had, whatever other nonsense they can cram in paired with little to no experience. Candidates write like this in an attempt to look impressive BUT any decent hiring manager will see through all that. This is a lot of filler and usually makes the potential employee appear desperate, so don’t do it!
Secondly, a big, chunky resume is difficult for the reviewer / hiring manager to read. I am more apt to pass over a 3 pager, loaded with all the toppings than a cleanly written one page CV. You want your resume to be easily readable and more importantly, scannable. Very few people are doing a deep dive on your resume – instead you want it to read fast and catch their eye.
Here is your goal – keep the resume to ONE page. Unless you’ve been in the business 20 years, you can fit it on a single page. All that semi relevant small stuff doesn’t NEED to be included – have a good reason to include what you do and tailor your resume to the job you are going for.
Also think about this – someone reviewing 50 resumes at a time may not actually look at your 2nd page. You only are guaranteed a glance at one page. Make it a good one.
Whenever I rework my resume, I always ask myself, ‘What can I remove?’ This is a great question to ask every time you sit down to retool the resume.
Your past employment should be 90% of your resume. Where did you work, what job did you do, and for how long. The rest you can go over in the interview. Scrape it down and make it simple!
nate funaro 