Resume Formats

Do you guys in the states ever use a CV when applying for a job?

I'm currently in the process of applying for internship with a PR / Communications agency in the US, and so far I've used my CV, which is two pages, along with a cover letter.

In Europe, or at least in Scandinavia, we really only operate with a CV, not a resume, when applying for job.

Am I actually making a mistake including a 2-page CV instead of a 1-page resume?

I don't think LinkedIn is that big of a deal. Everyone in my profession has a page but it's more of a status thing than a real networking tool.

Originally Posted by Connemara

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I don't think LinkedIn is that big of a deal. Everyone in my profession has a page but it's more of a status thing than a real networking tool.

This. LinkedIn is not all it's cracked up to be.

LinkedIn seems to be used more for finding prospective clients than prospective employees

Originally Posted by BC2012

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Never, ever go over one page. It's resume building 101.
This is bad advice as it does not take into consideration the field. There are some fields where one page is the maximum. In other fields, resumes are quite a bit longer. Mine is six pages long and I try to keep it as concise as possible. If you are a consultant who has made significant contributions on numerous engagements, there is no ******* way that is going to fit on one page.

Originally Posted by emilo

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Do you guys in the states ever use a CV when applying for a job?

I'm currently in the process of applying for internship with a PR / Communications agency in the US, and so far I've used my CV, which is two pages, along with a cover letter.

In Europe, or at least in Scandinavia, we really only operate with a CV, not a resume, when applying for job.

Am I actually making a mistake including a 2-page CV instead of a 1-page resume?

It depends on your field. In Education, CV's are standard. Professional development, publications, and sponsorships are equally important to experience.

Originally Posted by Eason

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It depends on your field. In Education, CV's are standard. Professional development, publications, and sponsorships are equally important to experience.

Indeed, I would argue that you should include what your prospective employer asks for. A C.V. is more detailed, and hence often extends beyond one page whereas rà sumà s, are as earlier stated, a one page summary.

Originally Posted by Reggs

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I spray John Varvatos: Vintage on the back of my resumes and I have a pretty good call back rate.
while I do recognise the humor, I wonder if that would work. I have just finished reading Brain Rules, which was a fascinating read that I highly recommend, and one of the areas it gets into is the impact of the sense of smell in all kinds of areas (recall/sales etc) as long as it is congruous with the topic at hand. Given that I 1. own my own business, so I'm not about to start applying anywhere and 2. typically emailed my CV around anyhow, I am unlikely to be my own guinea pig here, but it could be an interesting thing to play with. edit - I have a potential client presentation on Tuesday, maybe I will, I dunno, wear cologne and ever-so-lightly spray the accompanying document with it. Prompts better recall apparently....

...oh and as for my resume

Firstly, I'm Australian, we tend to use 'resume' and 'CV' interchangeably.

Format wise - it fits on a page. Font is Tahoma, size 11 IIRC. Oh, and I email it as a PDF if that counts for anything. This is mostly because I don't trust MS Word to display the same on everyone else's machine - people playing with less-common fonts should be super conscious of this, as should people playing with margins etc.

It includes my deets: name/contact stuff/nationality/birthdate/marital status.

Birthdate and marital status are frowned upon in the real world. However for people looking at overseas postings, for expat roles (in Asia at least) they want to know. This is because employers want to know what they are getting themselves into in terms of relocation/salary/package inclusions. If you are moving a young single to Korea, that's one thing. If you are moving a whole family, the applicant is going to expect international schooling, country club memberships etc etc in addition to (much larger) housing. A lot of CVs in this area also include a headshot. Mine used to, but I cut it for space.

I have a few lines as summary next, basically talking about how famous I am.

Career experience - continually condensed as I have gotten older (when you become MD, no one really cares about your activities when you were an Account Executive). At the moment, the bulk of 'position description' stuff is contained under MD, there are a few lines in the earliest roles - typically just big name clients that I have worked on. I have this written out, as the bullets were space chompers that pushed it into a second page.

Education (college only).

Other information - includes boards I sit on/have sat on, I have volunteer/charity things down here as well.

Believe it or not, SF is actually listed here. Yup, modding you fools made my CV. The reason for that is that the nature of my profession requires the ability to demonstrate some knowledge of this whole virtual world social networking kinda thing, and modding a forum of 60k people is a pretty damn good way to demonstrate that.

A couple of reference names at the bottom.

I don't include any hobbies etc there, although my bio has a self deprecating one liner - something like 'and is arguably the world's worst guitarist.'.

Originally Posted by Connemara

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I don't think LinkedIn is that big of a deal. Everyone in my profession has a page but it's more of a status thing than a real networking tool.
This is incredibly wrong and dangerously bad advice. In my world, LinkedIn is becoming the predominant networking and job search tool. Our last three hires relied all or mostly on LinkedIn in terms of attracting our internal corporate recruiter. In my opinion, a great LinkedIn profile is far more important than a great resume. Resumes are only seen by people you send them to. LinkedIn is a public, appropriate set of personal billboards of experience.

Originally Posted by Artisan Fan

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This is incredibly wrong and dangerously bad advice. In my world, LinkedIn is becoming the predominant networking and job search tool. Our last three hires relied all or mostly on LinkedIn in terms of attracting our internal corporate recruiter.

In my opinion, a great LinkedIn profile is far more important than a great resume. Resumes are only seen by people you send them to. LinkedIn is a public, appropriate set of personal billboards of experience.

At what level though? I highly doubt that consulting firms browse Linkedin in order to hire analysts. At a senior level though I imagine it's a pretty good tool for finding a hire with the specific skills you're looking for.

Originally Posted by Lord-Barrington

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At what level though? I highly doubt that consulting firms browse Linkedin in order to hire analysts. At a senior level though I imagine it's a pretty good tool for finding a hire with the specific skills you're looking for.

My company and many others hires analysts via LinkedIn.

..

Originally Posted by Artisan Fan

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This is incredibly wrong and dangerously bad advice. In my world, LinkedIn is becoming the predominant networking and job search tool. Our last three hires relied all or mostly on LinkedIn in terms of attracting our internal corporate recruiter. In my opinion, a great LinkedIn profile is far more important than a great resume. Resumes are only seen by people you send them to. LinkedIn is a public, appropriate set of personal billboards of experience.
+1 I get headhunters contacting me via LinkedIn all the time. Prior to taking LinkedIn seriously, I was pretty much invisible to them unless a friend put me in touch with someone randomly. I'm a pretty lousy networker, and for me, having a great LinkedIn profile creates a passive networking presence on my behalf that is always networking for me. It's not a total substitute for active networking. But it's great to have. Think of it like a multivitamin: it helps fill in whatever you're not getting through your food, so to speak.

Ok, a question for the pros here.
How do you reconcile the issue of protecting your privacy while having a widely-visible profile?
I mean, would you print 1000 copies of your resume and hand them out at the mall?
LinkedIn allows you to restrict profile views to connections or friends of connections, but doesn't this restrict a lot of its advantages as well?