“I have worked in the financial field for over twenty-five years with steadily increasing responsibility and success. Now I’m looking for a new opportunity and I don’t know how to present my experience. I’ve gotten my work history written out but it takes up four whole pages! I know that is too long but I don’t know what to do about it. Can you help?”
Career Resumes® responds:
This is a common problem that senior-level job seekers face. You have all this good experience and a career history that shows progression and advancement, but putting it all on a resume makes the resume much too long.
The solution is not to include details on all of it. Employers are only interested in what you have been doing for the past ten years or so. Back past ten years and the details of job performance and scope of responsibility is irrelevant. If you hold a position as CFO now, and the past ten years show a steady progression to that level, it doesn’t matter if you started as a file clerk twenty five years ago. You can show progression in that ten years that appears on the resume.
If you are wishing to make a career change and experience from your distant past may have relevance to your new direction, perhaps a combination format resume would be a better choice than a chronological one. It will depend on your specific situation. A qualified professional resume writer will be able to determine the relevance of that information and best showcase it to your advantage.
