Is it 2 or 3?

This afternoon I went to an open-day held by a recruitment agency in the south-east of England.

It was good to show an agency I can wear a suit, polish my shoes and give a general air of professionalism. Remember IT does have a slightly short-sleeve shirt image. Which is fine until you get into the upper layers of management.

I went through my c.v. with a couple of the recruiters I met there. They both felt that two pages was insufficient.

You could have knocked me down with a feather, if it was a particularly large and heavy one.

I've worked very hard to keep my c.v. to two pages. It's been itching to go to three pages but I've held firm. Moreover I've advised friends and colleagues to keep their c.v. down to this level.

I think I'm correct. If you can condense over 10 years of achievements to two pages of 12pt text then you've passed the succinctness test. Congratulations, your new BMW is in the executive car park. Well it should be. I drive a Nissan.

Outplacement consultancies agree with me on this two page limit. Well, they're not the ones in the recruitment process so I should go along with whatever vogue is passing the recruitment consultancy world. And another agency recently asked me for a three page c.v.

[Nevertheless, if you ever apply for a job reporting to me you better keep your c.v. to two pages].

So instead of a boring weekend looking at MPGs of people riding their bicylces into walls etc I can re-extend my c.v.

In fact I'm now going to have two stand-by c.v.s, one at two pages and one at three pages. I'll canvass recruiters on how many pages they'd like.

I still think I'm right about two pages ...