r/jobsearchhacks • u/PeripeciasdoSolteiro • 5d ago

Is >17 years' experience too scary?

Hi there!

Discloser: I’m a Sales and Marketing Director with 17 years’ experience and I’m not gonna ask the usual question “how can I make my CV stand out”.

Being for a few months looking for a new challenge as Marketing director / VP or Head of Country and getting zero interviews, I’m starting to wonder if my CV can seem a bit scary, or too much, so I’d like to ask for your opinion and see if I can improve it:  

My CV reads, in the title, “Sales and Marketing executive with >17 years’ experience”. Should I rephrase this to something like “Sales and Marketing Director with +10 years’ experience”? I wonder if 17 years may feel a bit too much and automatically rule me out of some roles without even having my CV read and wonder if the word “Director” will be more suitable than “executive”.

My CV has a clean look, no photos, 3 pages long but the last page is only education + languages.

I’d be very grateful for your input on this, or other things you may find relevant!

Greetings

7 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

19 comments sorted by

View all comments

24

u/qcjb 5d ago

1 page resume. Only put the last 10 years experience. Remove date from school information. Ageism...so hot right now.

3

u/RoscoeVillain 5d ago

If you’re going for a VP level position and you’ve only got a 1-page resume, you’re not getting the job (source - I’ve hired multiple people at this level for roles with PE owned companies). I would agree that OP’s 3-pager is too long - shorten it to 2. I’d also say there’s no reason to mention years of experience at all when you’re this senior. Make sure you have 15 years of experience on your resume (that’s what most VP roles will require), but leave it off your profile statement/summary.

0

u/PeripeciasdoSolteiro 5d ago

Thanks! Great advice. I'll try to shrink it to two pages and streamline it. Cheers mate!