CV length how many years?

[RachMonica]

Hi, I’ve got 15 years of continuous employment. Before that there was a year of unemployment. Then before that I had about 10 more years of work that is less relevant to what I’m doing now.

I think 25 years is too much on a CV anyway. Is it quite ok to start my work history from 15 years ago? This would hide the one year gap.

what Roles are you going for ?
latest info is to have 10 years and an updated linked in profile (if your industry uses it)
don’t hide the gap. Just have bullet points with the previous jobs. Can you say you were retraining or maternity that year?

Generally 10 years or so. No more than 2 pages of A4.

if your recent employment history covers the skills you need for a certain job then thats all you need.

For example no point in putting decorater from 17 years ago if you’re applying for IT field.

if there are skills that you think is important from those years, add as a summary highlight at the beginning of CV maybe.

@pineapplepinecones Not anything in management. I work in an area where there are really no promotions and you just do the same thing in different contexts.

I’d specify your experience for the last 20 years - anything beyond that then just a summary with dates and any keywords highlighting the experience - for example:

1992- 2002 -
Various roles in a Customer Facing environment - full detail’s available on your request. It was soo long ago its not really relevant.

What made me chuckle the most though was I know someone who is in their late 50s apply for an admin position and the MD of the company specifically requested to see exam certificates from school? They took their exams in 1981? Why does exam results matter from 40 odd years ago? Like what the actual? I can understand the need for a higher skilled position where a qualification is mandatory but not for a job like that when it will be more about experience if anything.

I've applied for jobs where they want everything listed - every job and qualification since you left school (40 years ago in my case). That's a blood pain to do!

good96 I had EXACTLY this teo weeks ago! I'm 52 next month and they wanted to see (original) copies of my GCSE certificates. It was for a school admin job.

My 35 years of admin experience seemed less important 🙄

Similar level experience here.

I do last 3 jobs (10ish years) as:

Job title, Dates, company

• Achievements/duties
• Achievements/duties
• Achievements/duties
• Achievements/duties
• etc

...and the years before that as

• Job title, company (2009)
• Job title, company (2007-9)
• Job title, company (2006-7)
• etc

I'd still only go back 20 years as an absolute max, 15 is more than fine.

The vaguer dates in the earlier bit also make it easy to hide a gap!