At Wynne Consulting we see hundreds of CV’s every day. The biggest mistake preventing you writing a strong cv is if you fill your CV’s with every single activity, skill or job you have ever had onto one page instead of focusing on creating a logical and compelling story of your career. Just recently I was reviewing a 12-page CV that started out with the following:

“My skills include marketing, social media, project management, accounting, tax law, employment law, financial management, sales strategy, 6 Sigma, operational effectiveness, advertising operations and software sales. I’ve also published two novels and took a few months off to write a poetry book in 2018.”

While it might seem tempting to list every skill you have ever acquired, there are actually a few profound disadvantages to this approach:

• Employers won’t remember anything if you try to focus on everything. If you list a long list of skills, an employer likely won’t recall any of them. It’s simply impossible to form a mental image if you present yourself as a lawyer, marketer and venture capitalist all in one. Which is it? Pick the one that is most important to you and emphasize it throughout your resume.

• Having a clear narrative is a huge advantage. I recently interviewed a candidate for a sales position. Within the first three minutes of the conversation he said, “I live and breathe sales. I love everything about selling.” He spent the next 15 minutes telling me about his different sales roles and why he had excelled at them. As a hiring manager, this really appealed to me — he had a excellent story that made me believe that he’d excel at the sales job I was hiring for. I later learned that he’d actually done a lot of things other than sales in his life, but he hadn’t focused on those things initially.

• CV’s that exceed two pages are considered unprofessional. There is a lot of advice about resumes out there. If you’re applying for a job at a corporate or an SME, it’s very clear: employers really dislike long CV’s. Being succinct is among the most important skills for a job applicant.

• If you want to impress an employer, it’s much better to show than tell. The most underused trick of the trade is simply to show the employer why you’re good instead of writing an endless resume.

• Finally, a lengthy or unfocused resume smells of desperation. Remember that person who went on a date who couldn’t stop telling you how good they were at everything? You probably only went on one date with them. Being “good at everything” seems like a lie (even if it’s true!). Don’t forget that landing a job is not that different from landing a date. You want to say just enough to get the hiring manager interested, but not so much that they become overwhelmed.

Before you apply for your next job ask yourself: who am I? Or rather, who am I in the context of this job application? Tailor your CV to tell a story that is so compelling that they’ll want to meet you to hear more.