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I'm currently trying to rewrite my professional resume realizing the mistakes I made on the previous one. Now I want to keep my resume clean and easy to read. I think I should also keep the technical jargon separated from stuff like my personal info and work/educational experiences.

I have explained under each work experience the responsibilities in sense of impact and achievements, but I feel it might not be sufficient to thoroughly showcase my professional skills. I thought maybe I can go into more details in a separate section for the interested individuals.

Is what I'm planning to do a good idea or it will just be overlooked completely?

Update: I'm pretty sure I'm in a country which there is no standard. I have personally seen tons of resumes ranging from 1 to several pages. But I wasn't planning to go more than 2 or 3 pages at most.
The resume template I have chosen has quite a few spacing in it to be aesthetically pleasing so I can't really put everything necessary in the first page.

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    It highly depends on your audience. In UK, they love really thick multi-page CVs. In the US, you really do not want to do more than 2 pages, but I see even single page CVs that needs only 10 seconds to digest.
    – Nelson
    Commented Feb 22, 2019 at 7:13
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    I'm US-based. A two part resume sounds really long and disjointed. If you mention a technology in a job and I would expect you to go into more detail on the phone if it mattered to the role.
    – jcmack
    Commented Feb 22, 2019 at 7:26
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    @Nelson I was taught and my experience in the UK was that brevity ruled there as much as anywhere else. No more than 2 pages.
    – HorusKol
    Commented Feb 22, 2019 at 12:16
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    @Nelson I've seen similarly long resumes. And then almost always ignored them.
    – HorusKol
    Commented Feb 22, 2019 at 14:35
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    Please add a country tag. My CV would look like I came from Mars in an UFO to a US company and a US CV would go straight into the bin for missing even the most basic information where I live. There is no global "good CV".
    – nvoigt ♦
    Commented Feb 22, 2019 at 14:47

4 Answers 4

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Your resume is a way to get a hiring manager or recruiter interested in talking to you about a position you applied to. It doesn't need to answer every possible question they'll have, but it should pique their interest.

My resume's structure is:

  • Name
  • Contact information
  • Education
  • Skills
  • Related Work Experience

The full resume is 2 pages, but I usually trim to 1 page depending on the role I'm apply for.

Under each work experience be sure to highlight your impact to the company (i.e. did you increase number of users, deliver critical feature, reduce company costs, etc) and the tech stack you used.

Franky, I would not read your detailed skills section, because it needs to be in some professional context.

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  • Mine is identical (although I have managed to trim it to a mere 5 pages, by dropping about 20 years of experience ;-) Name, contact & education, I am sure no one will dispute. Then, on the rest of page 1, there is a summary description of my industry niches, position & technologies, each which is expanded on on subsequent pages, job by job, newest first. That satisfies those who are too buy & important to do more than scan the first page, which is generally enough to grab them & suck them in --- >
    – Mawg
    Commented Feb 22, 2019 at 8:39
  • ---> If I did not have a summary, maybe people would not read the 5 pages, but that's only 4 pages for job descriptions, each with a few title line for company, position & dates, then the meat of the job description, followed by a keywords/skills: line. YKmMv
    – Mawg
    Commented Feb 22, 2019 at 8:39
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Yes, it is perfectly fine to split the CV in two parts. I did that for many years, and I never had a problem.

Here is a description of the structure of my CV.

As a wrap-up, the structure is:

  • CV / 1 page - overview - read by everybody;
  • CV / N additional pages - details - read by whoever is interested
  • Cover Letter / K pages - usually not requested (in my case)
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Depends on the type of job. I read a lot of CVs and the key is to match the job description to what they are looking for. I would recommend hitting the key points on a summary page, cover letter or the opening paragraphs. OK to split into two sections so long as you grab the readers attention with matching skills and encourage them to read through. If it is technical role e.g. requires skill/formal education/degree in thing x, then state that early on.

Big tip: check to make sure you are providing what the advert looks for. The number of times i've posted adverts that say 'please include a covering letter' and one isn't included (the job required a lot of attention to detail).

Good luck with the job search!!

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One skill you may need is the ability to move all the required information from your two-part resume/CV into the computer based job applications. In many cases they only have a single box per previous place of employment. In that box you have to include all the relevant information regarding skills, duties and accomplishments.

If you are spending way too long rearranging all the information on the resume into the chronological based form that application is requesting you may be decide that applying to multiple places is too hard.

I always advise people to make sure their resume is still effective when it is cut and pasted into text boxes with no formatting.

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