Space is at a premium on your CV. It is usual to restrict it to 2 pages of A4, or 3 if you are a highflying executive with a long and successful career to highlight.

The reader’s time is at a premium too. Anyone reading CV s is trying to out sort all the irrelevant ones out as fast as possible.

So information needs to be relevant and concise. Everything there needs to add value for the recruiter and employer.

But an astonishing number of people try to cram everything they have ever done, every qualification they have ever earned, on to that limited space and into the limited time frame the reader has.

People include part time jobs they had at college, assuming the reader will filter out what they don’t want. But the effect will be to detract from your relevant experience. Don’t make the reader do the filtering, you do it!

It is OK to have a couple of separate CVs if you have had a couple of different career themes and are looking for work in either of them at the moment.

So for example you may have a sales and marketing CV, showcasing your effective and successful career in those sectors. And then you have retrained as a personal trainer so have another set of skills, competencies and achievements related to that.

Ok, there are transferable skills such as interpersonal skills, leadership skills, but the achievements related to them will be different. If you put it all on one CV you are giving a very mixed message.

It is much more effective to have two separate CVs altogether, with possibly a third you might want to use to apply for general management positions, which will need to be carefully worded to blend your achievements and qualifications, leaving some of the less relevant ones off altogether.

Look at it this way. You want a position dealing with problems for an employer. This is the first piece of work of yours they will see. If you can’t make that concise and relevant what will your work be like? Will they have to filter that to find what they need as well?

So spring clean your CV!! Cut it down to the basics.