Executive CV: How to Condense 20 Years Into 2 Pages

Senior candidates fall into two traps. Either they hand over an eight-page memoir of every role since the 1990s, or they over-edit into a one-page list of titles that hides their best work. The right answer for an executive CV is two pages that read like a strategy document: top of page one tells the recruiter who you are and what scale you operate at, and the rest proves it with hard outcomes.

The two-page rule (and the one exception)

For director-and-above roles, two pages is the global standard. The exception is academia, medicine, and a few regulated industries where a full CV is expected — those follow their own conventions and the rules below do not apply.

Page 1: the strategic shop window

Headline

Name and a one-line professional headline. 'CFO — scaling SaaS finance through IPO' beats 'Finance Executive'.

Executive summary, three to five lines

Years of experience, sectors, P&L or team scale, two signature accomplishments. Think of it as the cover blurb of a book — enough to make the reader open it.

Areas of expertise

A six-to-nine item grid of capability tags: M&A, multi-country P&L, transformation, board reporting, capital raising. ATS food and a fast visual scan for the reader.

Recent role(s) in depth

Your two most recent positions take the bottom half of page one. Each gets a one-line role context, four to six achievement bullets, and clear scale numbers (people, budget, revenue, geography). Achievements only — duties are implied at this level.

Page 2: depth without bloat

Earlier roles get progressively less space. The third most recent role: one paragraph and two bullets. The fourth and fifth: one line each — title, company, dates, single headline outcome. Anything older than 15 years collapses into a 'Earlier career' three-line summary at the bottom of page two. Board roles, education, and select speaking engagements get the final section.

Lead with outcomes the board would care about

Replace operational language with executive language. Not 'managed the marketing budget,' but 'reallocated $14M marketing spend toward enterprise channels, lifting pipeline contribution from 22% to 41% in 18 months.' Each bullet should answer one question: what changed because you were there?

The condensation moves that save the most space

• Use 10pt body text, 11pt headings. Resist anything smaller — recruiters print.
• Tight margins (1.5cm) and 1.1 line spacing.
• Collapse anything older than 15 years into a single 'Earlier career' block.
• Cut every adjective that does not carry information ('successful', 'strategic', 'dynamic').
• Replace prose paragraphs with crisp parallel bullets.
• Drop the address — city and country are enough.

What stays off an executive CV

Headshot (unless market practice demands it), age or date of birth, photo of signature, references, certifications older than five years that are not still required for the role, and any hobbies that are not a deliberate signal. Marathons can stay if you want to show endurance; book club rarely earns its line.

Get the second pair of eyes

Seera's Fix My CV reads your current document — even if it is currently six pages — and rewrites it into a tight two-page executive format with the structure above. You keep voice and content; the tool handles the condensation and the bullet rewrites.