How long should a CV be?
What is the ideal size of a CV? Some people, including Yves Quintal, director and founder of the recruitment agency Quintal, affiliated with the pan-Canadian network Aplin Recruitment, will tell you that there is no standard size: “The rule about not being longer than two pages is not important. The only thing that matters is that the CV be representative and pertinent. One should make sure to include only useful information, and if that means having a CV that is more than two pages long, so be it.”
Others, such as Rychard Gagnon, in charge of media relations at the Ministère de l’emploi et de la solidarité sociale du Québec, recommend staying within the limits of two or three pages. He concedes that the only exceptions are “people who have substantial professional experience or who are applying for a highly specialized position for which very specific skills are needed.” This is all the more true because, for clarity’s sake, it can be useful to set a limit to the length of the CV, as it forces you to stick to the essentials. For, just as it is not advisable to have an empty CV, it is not any better to have one that is too full, according to Rychard Gagnon. “You have to be careful not to put too much into it and, again, to keep in mind that recruiters devote very little time to each CV. If only for this reason, it is preferable to be both precise and concise.”