How long should a CV be?

The short answer

Two sides of A4, in a readable font, with sensible margins. That is the length UK employers expect from anyone with a few years of work behind them, and it is the length most job advice in the UK assumes. It gives you room for a short profile, your recent jobs in some detail, your qualifications and your skills, without asking the reader to wade through things that do not matter to them.

Length is not really the goal, though. The goal is that everything on the page earns its place for this particular job. A tight page and a half is better than two pages padded to fill the space, and two strong pages are better than one crammed page with the font shrunk to 8 point. If you are stuck between lengths, go with whatever lets the reader find your most relevant experience fastest.

One page or two: who should use which

A one-page CV is right when you do not yet have enough relevant material to fill two. That covers most school leavers, students looking for part-time work or internships, and many graduates applying for their first job. It also suits some jobs where hiring is fast and the reader wants the essentials at a glance, such as retail, hospitality and warehouse work, even for people with more experience.

Two pages is right once you have several jobs to describe, or one long job with a lot of substance in it. That is most people from a couple of years into their career onwards, including career changers who need space to explain transferable experience. A manager, specialist or professional with ten or twenty years behind them still usually fits into two pages, because older roles get shorter as they recede.

• One page: school leavers, students, most recent graduates, and short applications for shop, bar, café or warehouse work.
• Two pages: most people with work experience, career changers, managers and professionals.
• Three pages or more: academics, doctors and some senior, technical or contract roles where a full record is expected.

When a longer CV is the right call

Some fields expect a full record rather than a summary, and a two-page version would leave out things the panel wants to count. The main ones are these.

Academic CVs

University posts want every publication, grant, teaching role and conference paper, so an academic CV grows with your career. A postdoc applying for a lectureship might need three to five pages, and a professor far more. See our academic CV example for how to order the sections so the first page still does the heavy lifting.

Medical and clinical CVs

Doctors list rotations, audits, quality improvement projects, teaching, presentations and courses, and specialty panels expect to see them. A doctor in training often needs more than two pages. Nurses and allied health professionals usually stay at two.

Senior, technical and contract roles

A contractor with many short engagements, an engineer with a long list of projects, or an executive with board-level roles may need a third page. Even here, put the most recent and most relevant work on page one, and consider moving project lists to an appendix or a portfolio link rather than growing the main CV indefinitely.

How far back your CV should go

There is no fixed cut-off, but a useful rule is that detail should shrink with age. Your current and previous role get full bullet points. Jobs from roughly ten to fifteen years ago get a line or two each. Anything older can go into a single "Earlier career" line that lists job titles and employers without dates, or be dropped altogether if it has nothing to do with the job you want.

Be careful with gaps, though. Removing old jobs is fine. Removing a job in the middle of your recent history leaves an unexplained hole that a reader will notice. If a period was spent on caring, study, travel, illness or looking for work, one line saying so is enough. Some application forms, particularly in schools and the public sector, ask for a complete employment history anyway, so keep a full record somewhere even if your CV is edited down.

How to cut a CV that is too long

Most long CVs are long because of repetition, not because of too much experience. Work through these in order, and check the page count after each step:

1. Delete duties that anyone in the job would have done ("responsible for answering emails") and keep the bullet points that describe something you achieved or changed.
2. Merge bullet points that make the same point in different jobs. If three roles all say you are good with customers, say it once, in the job where you have the best example.
3. Shorten older roles to one or two lines each.
4. Once you have work experience, cut the "References" section. Employers will ask for referees when they need them.
5. Remove hobbies unless they are relevant to the job or say something unusual about you.
6. Drop GCSE detail once you have a degree or several years of work, or reduce it to one line.
7. Trim the profile to three or four sentences.

Resist the urge to fix length with layout tricks. Shrinking the font below 10 point, cutting margins to nothing or squeezing the line spacing makes the page harder to read, and it is obvious to the reader what you have done.

How to fill a CV that is too short

If your CV only covers half a page, the answer is not to write longer sentences. It is to find more evidence. Look again at everything you have done: volunteering, clubs, school or university roles, projects, caring responsibilities, freelance or cash-in-hand work, and courses you have taken online. Each can become an entry with two or three lines about what you did.

Then add detail to what is already there. Most short CVs list a job title and a sentence of duties. Add the size of the team, the number of customers or orders, the systems you used, and one thing you improved or were trusted with. A skills section with specific tools and languages also helps, as long as each item is true and you could talk about it.

Does CV length matter to applicant tracking systems?

Applicant tracking systems, the software many employers use to collect and sort applications, read the text of your CV rather than counting pages. A two-page CV is not penalised for being two pages. What causes problems is layout: text in tables, columns, headers and footers, or images can be read out of order or missed. Keep the structure simple, use standard headings such as "Experience" and "Education", and include the words the job advert uses where they genuinely describe what you did.

Length does matter to the person who reads the CV after the software. Recruiters working through a long list will give page one far more attention than page two, so your most relevant experience needs to be near the top whatever the total length. You can paste your CV and a job advert into our free ATS CV checker to see how the wording matches.

A quick length checklist

• Two full pages if you have work experience, one full page if you are just starting out.
• No half-empty last page.
• Font between 10 and 12 point, margins of at least about 1.5 cm.
• Your most relevant job and strongest achievements on page one.
• Older roles shortened to a line or two, with no unexplained gaps.
• No duties that anyone in the job would do, and no repeated points.
• Longer only if you are in a field, such as academia or medicine, that expects a full record.