How long should a CV be?

The rule by experience

Region matters. In the UK and Ireland two pages is standard. If you are applying in the United States, the one-page resume is a stronger convention and a second page needs justifying.

• Under five years, one page.
• Five to fifteen years, two pages.
• More than fifteen years, still two pages, with the older roles compressed to a line each.
• Three or more pages only for academic, research, medical or senior technical CVs, where publications, grants or a project list are expected.

Where the extra length actually comes from

Long CVs are usually long because old jobs kept their original detail. A role from twelve years ago does not need six bullets. It needs a line with the title, the employer and the dates.

Give roughly two thirds of the space to your last two roles. Everything before that is context, and context can be brief.

What to cut first

• Responsibilities that any holder of that title would have had.
• Anything more than about fifteen years old, beyond a single line.
• Skills lists padded with basics such as email or word processing.
• Hobbies, unless they are relevant or genuinely unusual.
• A photograph, date of birth or marital status, which UK and Irish employers would rather not have on a CV.
• References available on request. Nobody needs telling.

Why the top of page one decides it

A first pass takes seconds. Your summary line and the top of your most recent role do almost all the work of getting you to a proper read, and everything after that is evidence for a decision already leaning one way.

That is why the page count argument is mostly a distraction. A well-ordered two pages beats a cramped one page that buries the relevant work at the bottom.

How we do it

The version we generate for each posting reorders your experience against that job, expands the roles that match it and compresses the ones that do not, so length follows from relevance rather than from how much you have done.