Short and sweet?

I am all for short and sweet, especially where CVs are concerned. The more impact you can make the better as far as I'm concerned. But you can take it too far. Take the CV we received yesterday. I have just done a word count - 122 words! And if you take out the tags the gentleman added at the bottom, like “auctioneer, sales, commission etc”, it comes down to 108 words. And some of that is his address and interests. While you do not want to bore your prospective readership, if the only thing you can say about your career (and his was over 30 years long) is about 60 words, then you either not got much to say and shout about, or you can't be bothered. In either case you are not going to impress an employer. I suspect this CV was cut-and-paste from a LinkedIn profile. And even on LinkedIn I would say that 100 words was way too short. Remember, your CV should be neatly laid out, well ordered and easy to read. But it should contain some content. For example, I have no idea how many people this gentleman has managed, the sorts of volumes his dealerships were responsible for, even the franchises involved. These are basic bits of information that are essential for any employer to make a decision about you. It would also be nice to know if he had been consistently profitable over the years, if he had hit targets, if he had grown any of his businesses. Less information is generally good, no information is useless. Want to subscribe to this blog? click here.