I’m with you on that, @testerfromliverpool. I think it’s possible to capture on a CV/Resume what you might want to capture on a cover letter. I like CV/Resume’s that include a paragraph or two at the top that follow a pattern like this:
I believe in < this important thing related to building products for customers >
My style of testing fits in < via this thing that’s important to me >
I enjoy < this thing about testing > because < reason >
I’m looking for < this type of opportunity >
I work for a psychometric assessment company (Talogy). We have loads of different tests, but the initial one I use is a combined verbal, numerical and abstract reasoning assessment. We don’t have a particularly high bar for entry, but have found it’s proven to be a pretty good first checkpoint to date.
During the further interview I have “find the bugs in this screenshot” and “what would you test for this page” tasks to do, which I made myself.
Without shortlisting are you giving assessment for everyone ?
I am still not sure when you mention CV’s 20 page long as being sarcastic or serious? Imagine having to read through 40 20-page long CV’s! That’s insane. And like others said - most is just noise.
You also mentioned your CV has a loooooooooooong list of projects because you work on shorter projects. As a personal preference, to me that’s also a noise - I am much more interested what skills and techniques a person knows, so you could sum up all those projects in some 10-15 lines. I’d list such projects as an Appendix, to not clutter the CV too much.
Also, as Oleksandr mentioned, up-to-date skills are cruicial. I regularly delete my earlier experiences that I think do not need or know anymore. For example, I have been programming in Delphi 15 years ago but sure as heck I will not put that on my CV nowadays because I forgot all about it 
I do in some instances yeah, sometimes we’ll have an external recruiter doing a first fix on who gets the test but it’s mostly automated. The system allows people to register and take the test, they see their own results in a report, and I get an email to tell me when someone has completed. We don’t have 100’s of people applying thankfully, so I’ve never been overrun!
This is an interesting topic to read through.
I’m with you on this - I wasn’t sure how to take it! A ‘CV’ that’s 20 pages isn’t a CV by definition, at least here in the UK. I’ve read shorter books.
If we’re talking from a hiring managers perspective, I challenge that they would be willing to read through 20 pages of someones work-life / career over, just having a conversation with the candidate and extracting the information you need from them in that sort of setting. In doing this you’re getting a much better feel of the candidate as well, what’s important to them, what their motivations are etc.
I’m talking specifically about CV’s here - If someone wants 20 pages of their career and work-life on LinkedIn or their own blog / page - that’s completely different, and much more appropriate to link from your CV.
Even if you’ve worked in tech for many, many years and could easily fill 20 pages; Your CV - your CURRENT CV - should contain relevant experience applicable for the job you’re applying for, and within the first 3rd of the CV there needs to be ‘enough’ in there for the hiring manager to know that you have the relevant skills or not.
There is a good chance by the time the hiring manager is half way through the first page, they’ve made a decision on whether to progress your application or not.
I am dead serious. Still a personal preference. You guys are all talking about a 2 page CV which contains “almost no information” on what they did on their projects besides a summary or things and skills. But when you have to review 100 resume’s a week and all of them look the same because they are only 1 or 2 pages with a few skills on (selenium & jenkins 99% of the time)… Then you have to make a selection… because I’m not going to talk to all of them obviously.
Exactly, I just wonder now how many resume’s you see a week? If you see 100 resume’s of a 1 pager when somebody only mentions Selenium & Jenkins then it will drive you crazy. But when there is a guy who mentions Selenium & Jenkins and actually talks about some challenges he had and how to tackled them… that’s what I want, because doing the actual interview, the people with 1-2 pages almost always get rejected after the interview.
So personally, I rather read a fully summarized resume because he actually took the time to do it, a person who’s more detailed is what I’m looking for. Not another tester “like everyone else”. I want somebody on my team who thinks differently then others and dares to be different.
Again, it’s just personal preference but I am serious. If I see a guy with a 1 page resume naming Selenium and Jenkins . It doesn’t seem “attracting” to me compared to a fully summarized resume.
EDIT: Don’t get me wrong here, there is nothing wrong with a 1-2 page resume. I’m just saying; I like to recruit people who are different and dare to be different.
I appreciate your point of view, and you make a sound point about many 1-2 page CVs looking the same… but I never once said 1 or 2 pages? - that’s putting words in my mouth.
Of course a CV can be more than 2 pages, especially for people who have been in tech a long time, they may slip into 3 or even 4 pages - but after this, in my opinion, that is no longer a CV - it’s becoming something else.
I think we’re talking about two different documents. What you are describing, is not a CV, so we’ll have to agree to disagree on that point.
From a candidates point of view when applying roles, they may apply for many positions - especially if they have been made redundant or need to get out of a toxic workspace, they may be ‘less fussy’ as to what they apply for - I personally think it’s a massive risk to send a 20 page document for a job roles and claim its a CV - I think you as a hiring manager looking for long “CVs” is rare - The candidate is looking for a new job, and guaranteed interviews and ‘ins’ for the positions they’re applying for, a 20 page document is not the way to do that - that is just how it is, and I believe a recruiter (if there are any around to comment here?) would back up this.
I can only speak from my experience here in the UK - things might be different elsewhere, I suppose.
Another thought… Flip this around again from the hiring managers perspective - if you’re hiring for a position, your hiring to solve a problem, fill a gap - you often have a budget and need to do this within a reasonable timescale. Your telling me here that if you get 100 CV’s all with relevant experience on them, you would not consider them because you’re waiting for ‘the one that dares to be different’ - I challenge that, from an ethical standpoint as someone in a position to make or break peoples careers, provide them with the security of a job, these 100 CVs are ‘no good’ ??
Every single one of those 100, 1 or 2 page CV’s could be an absolutely outstanding candidate.
Sorry if it sounds to harsh, not my intention at all.
All co-consultants here have 10-30 page resume’s. For us here in Belgium it’s pretty normal.
And yea, there are good candidates that have 1-2 page resume’s, it’s not like we don’t do interviews with them, we do indeed. It’s just you can only do so many 
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