Six ways to save space on your CV

You’ve written your CV and given it a final proofread. There’s just one problem – it’s way too long! You could change the text to a really small font and make the margins teeny tiny, but that’s just going to look cramped and difficult to read. You need to get ruthless with your wording and formatting, so that you’re presenting a concise, easily readable and powerful document. But how? CV Shed has some tips on how to save space on your CV.

1.    Remove unnecessary contact details

If your contact details are taking up more than one line, you’re wasting space on your CV. You don’t need your full address on your CV these days (and certainly not spread over several lines!) – just the town and first part of your postcode is enough. Contact details aren’t your main selling point, so they don’t need to take up prime real estate at the top of your CV. Save this space for information that will convince a recruiter to take your application seriously!

2.    Be selective about your responsibilities

Don’t just copy and paste your job description onto your CV. Apart from looking sloppy, it’s a real waste of space. It will have tasks that aren’t relevant to your current career aspirations and, if you’ve been in your current job for some time, it’s likely that it will also contain tasks you no longer do, but not tasks that you actually do. Ditch the job description and write a short, punchy summary of your role, including your main remit and key statistics, with your focus firmly on your ideal next step. Using short bullet points instead of a clunky paragraph has the benefit of forcing you to write concisely, as well as being easier to read.

3.    Don’t go too far back in time

If you were working in the eighties (or even the nineties), there’s no need to include details from this time on your CV. The jobs are almost certainly not relevant to your next role and it leaves you open to age discrimination. If you want to show your career progression, then job titles and employer names are all that’s required. It’s unlikely that any recruiter will be impressed by the entry-level work you were doing 40 years ago if you’re applying for a senior leadership position – especially if it’s not even in the same sector!

4.    Consider your hobbies carefully

Depending on what stage you’re at in your career, you really don’t need to dedicate much, if any, space to your hobbies and interests. Make sure that they take up an appropriate proportion of your CV. For example, if you’re fresh out of college, they may take up a large amount of space, but if you’re at Board level you really don’t need to mention them at all.

5.    Remember less is more

There’s no obligation to include absolutely everything; it will just dilute the important details that you need the recruiter to focus on. Be selective about what you include and what you leave out. A clear, well-spaced and considered CV is more likely to make a positive first impression than a cramped document that requires the reader to wade through masses of irrelevant waffle. Tailoring the CV to the role means that you can be even more ruthless about what you cut out, so that only the information that really sells you is left.

6.    Cut the personal stuff

Recruiters are busy people and they don’t want to spend hours poring over every CV. They just want to know, at a glance, whether you’re worth inviting to interview. Curriculum Vitae means “course of life”, but you shouldn’t take that literally. No-one wants to know your cats’ names, details of your messy divorce, why you quit your last job or why you relocated to the other side of the world. Just give them the information they need to make a quick decision. 

If you’re still struggling to save space on your CV – or if you have any other CV-related questions – please do get in touch! I offer full CV rewrites as well as LinkedIn profiles and cover letters.