What to include in a CV when you have 25+ years of experience

A 25-year career on a single page produces a CV that reads like a résumé of someone with no recent work. A 25-year career on six pages produces a CV that no recruiter will finish.

The right answer is two pages. Sometimes three for a CXO role with board commitments. The challenge is what to leave out, and the question is more difficult than it appears, because most senior professionals have spent two decades treating every role as worth keeping.

This guide walks through the decisions.

The first 10 years compress to two lines

The first decade of a long career belongs in a single combined entry. Two lines, sometimes three. Job title, company, dates as a range, one summary line of what was learned or accomplished.

This feels brutal. It is the right call.

A senior leader's CV is read by people interested in the senior leader. The early career establishes credibility, not capability. The reader needs to know you progressed. They do not need to know the specifics of how.

The exception is when the early career contains something genuinely distinctive: a founding role, a notable client win, a specific industry that connects to a current target. That earns its own line. The rest collapses.

The middle decade earns two roles, full treatment

The middle of a career is where most distinctive work happens. The first major leadership role. The first transformation programme. The first board exposure.

Two of these middle roles deserve full treatment. Title, company, dates, three to five achievements, one piece of context.

The choice of which two depends on the target role. A leader currently moving toward a CTO position picks the two roles where technology decisions defined the work. A leader moving toward a CFO position picks the two roles where financial impact defined it.

If the target is unclear, the two with the largest scale and the most distinctive context win.

The last decade is the body of the CV

Most of the document is the last decade. This is what the recruiter is hiring against. Treat it accordingly.

The most recent role gets the most space. Five to seven achievements, full context, recent performance. The role before that gets a similar treatment but shorter, four to five achievements. The role before that, three to four.

This taper is the natural shape of a senior CV. The eye reads more about the recent past, less about the older. Anything that flattens this taper makes the document harder to scan.

Board, advisory, and committee work

Senior leaders often accumulate board seats, advisory roles, and committee memberships over a long career. These belong in their own section, separate from the executive history.

If there are more than three, list them. If there are five to ten, group them. More than ten, select the most relevant.

A separate section signals the reader that you are operating at the level where these roles exist. Hiding them in the executive history dilutes both.

Education at the bottom, briefly

A 25-year career has earned the right to put education at the bottom of the CV in a single line. Degree, university, year. No GPA. No honours. No coursework.

The exception: if the degree is from an institution still genuinely valued by the target market (a top-three business school, a doctorate from a recognised programme, a specialist qualification that maps to the role), expand to two lines.

Otherwise, one line. The reader does not need more.

Awards and recognition

A senior career produces awards. Most of them do not belong in the CV.

The test: would a hiring manager at the target role recognise the award? If yes, include it. If no, omit it.

A "Best Manager" award from an internal company programme does not pass the test. A "Top 50 Healthcare Leaders" feature in a known industry publication does. A speaking engagement at a major conference does.

Three to five awards are usually the right number. More than five, the reader stops reading them.

Speaking, writing, and visibility

Senior leaders often have a body of work outside their day jobs. Conference talks, industry publications, podcasts, board contributions, advisory work.

This belongs in a "Selected Speaking and Writing" section if the volume is high enough. If three or four pieces, a single line referencing them. If more than ten, select the most distinctive.

The visibility section signals more than the content does. It tells the reader you are operating at a stage where external visibility is part of the role.

What to leave out completely

A 25-year CV gets cleaner when these are removed:

• Photographs (unless required by region)
• Personal details (date of birth, marital status, children)
• Hobbies (unless directly relevant to the role)
• Languages (unless multilingual at a level relevant to the target market)
• References ("References available on request" is implicit and outdated)
• Software tools (unless the role is technical)
• Self-descriptions ("Strong leader with passion for results")

The space recovered from these omissions goes to your two strongest middle-career achievements, expanded by a line each.

The two-page test

Before sending, run the two-page test. Print the document and read it as a stranger.

If the first page closes with a line that makes you want to turn over, the structure is working. If the first page ends mid-thought or mid-list, restructure so the page break occurs naturally.

A two-page CV with a clean break between pages reads as one document. A two-page CV with a forced break reads as one document plus an unwanted appendix.

When three pages are not too many

A handful of senior careers genuinely justify three pages. CXOs with substantial M&A history. Board chairs with multiple concurrent appointments. Leaders with publication or speaking volume that matters for the target role.

The test: is the third page carrying material that the target hiring panel will read with attention? If yes, three pages is the right document. If no, compress to two.

Three pages is a permission, not a default.

Why this is hard to do alone

The 25-year CV is the hardest type of document to write for yourself. Two and a half decades of work make it almost impossible to see the proof points clearly. Everything feels worth keeping.

The discovery call we run for senior leadership and executive CVs is built around this challenge. An external eye on a long career produces a different document than the same career writing about itself.

If you are at this career stage, the work is worth getting outside help on. The CV is what carries you into senior conversations, and senior conversations rarely give you a second read.