Senior CV Surgery: Cutting 15 Years Down To Two Killer Pages

You’re not getting hired because of what you did in 2009.

There, I said it.

If your senior resume or executive CV still reads like a chronological diary of your long career resume, it’s not “thorough.” It’s bloated. And bloated resumes get skimmed, then skipped.

Let’s fix that.

The Harsh Math Of A Senior CV

I’ve reviewed thousands of resumes for senior and exec roles. Let me spoil the plot. Recruiters give you:

• 6–10 seconds for the first pass
• Roughly 2 pages of patience

You may have 20+ years of experience. They have 20+ tabs open.

The tension is obvious. You’ve got a resume for 20 years experience, multiple industries, a few “character-building” mistakes, maybe a layoff or two. They want a clean, tight two page resume that screams, “Here’s what I can deliver in the next 18–36 months.”

Notice the mismatch? You’re writing your past. They’re buying your future.

So the strategy is simple, even if the execution hurts: compress 15+ years into two focused pages by brutal prioritization. Recent impact, leadership, metrics. Everything else either gets summarized or sacrificed.

The Only Part Everyone Actually Reads

Let’s talk about the executive summary. Or rather, the lack of one.

If you’re senior and your CV starts with “Objective: Seeking a challenging role where I can utilize my skills…”, I already know you’re recycling a template from a decade ago.

At your level, the summary is not a polite intro. It is a positioning statement. It tells me:

• What altitude you operate at
• What kinds of problems you solve
• What scale you’ve handled
• How you measure your impact

Here’s a sample executive summary I wish more senior candidates had the nerve to use:

Sample Executive Summary (Senior / Executive CV) Executive Summary

Commercially driven Senior Product & Operations Leader with 18+ years building and scaling B2B and B2C businesses across Europe and North America. Known for turning messy, ambiguous environments into focused roadmaps, accountable teams, and revenue growth.

Recent highlights: led 220-person organization to grow ARR from $48M to $96M in 24 months, while cutting churn from 14% to 7%. Built and mentored a bench of 6 senior leaders who now run core business lines. Track record partnering with CEOs, boards, and cross-functional execs to ship, scale, and fix what’s broken without burning out the team.

Core strengths: org design & leadership, outcome-focused product strategy, commercial alignment, executive storytelling, data-informed decision-making.

Notice what’s going on there.

I’m not listing “hardworking, detail-oriented, team player.” I’m drawing a target. “If you need this kind of impact at this kind of scale, keep reading. If not, close the tab.”

Your summary should do that. Polarize a little. It should repel the wrong roles and lock in the right ones.

The 15-Year Chainsaw: What Gets Cut, What Survives

Let’s get bloody.

You’ve got 15–20 years of experience. You want a sharp two page resume. You can’t keep everything. So here’s the ruthless rule I use when I help senior folks rebuild their executive CV:

Page 1 and the top half of page 2 are prime real estate. Only your strongest 6–10 years belong there in detail.

Everything else gets progressively compressed.

Here’s how I mentally sort a long career resume.

Tier 1: Last 5–7 Years (Full Spotlight)

This is your core story. It should take 60–70% of your two pages.

For these roles you:

• Keep the full title, company, dates, location
• Include 4–8 bullets per role (for exec roles, sometimes 3–5, but heavier bullets)
• Go deep on scope, scale, and outcomes

If you led 3 teams, say how many people. If you owned revenue, say how much. If you fixed something broken, show the before and after.

This is where leadership bullet patterns matter. You’re no longer proving individual contributor skill, you’re proving you can move systems.

Leadership bullet patterns that actually work

Use these as templates and fill with your own data.

• “Grew function/product/business from X to Y in Z months by brief strategy, resulting in outcome metric.”
• “Led a team of X (across Y locations/functions) to deliver initiative, improving metric by A% and reducing pain by B%.”
• “Rebuilt team/process/org structure, consolidating from X to Y units and cutting cost/time by Z% while maintaining/improving key metric.”
• “Partnered with C-level / board / key stakeholders to define and execute strategy, leading to concrete commercial or operational result.”
• “Inherited underperforming team/product/region at metric, implemented specific initiatives, and lifted results to better metric within timeframe.”

Notice the rhythm: context, action, impact. No fluff verbs, no “responsible for.” You’re not responsible, you delivered.

Tier 2: 8–12 Years Ago (Summarized, Still Useful)

These roles support the story, but they’re not the star of the show.

You:

• Keep the full title, company, dates
• Include 2–4 bullets per role
• Focus on promotions, scope jumps, and foundational skills

This section answers a simple question, “Did this person grow in a sane, credible way?”

What to emphasize here:

• First leadership roles
• First time owning a P&L, product portfolio, or region
• Big step-changes: promotion, move from IC to manager, manager to director

What to quietly drop:

• Every tool you touched
• Every minor project you “contributed” to
• Over-detailed tech or process from 10 years ago that you’d never directly use again at your level

If you can’t link a bullet to your current value proposition, it’s clutter.

Tier 3: 13+ Years Ago (Pruned Aggressively)

This is the graveyard of early-career roles.

You still list them. But you shrink them. Sometimes to a single line. Sometimes to a tiny cluster.

Instead of:

Don’t do this

Senior people showing 8 bullets for a role in 2008:

• Managed daily operations of X
• Collaborated with cross-functional teams
• Created reports using Excel
• Supported the implementation of Y
• Assisted the manager with Z

You get the idea. Nobody cares.

Do this instead.

Better pattern for early-career roles Early Career

Project Manager, Company A, 2008–2011
Business Analyst, Company B, 2005–2008

Progressive roles in consulting and operations, focused on process improvement, reporting, and client delivery. Built the analytical and stakeholder-management foundation for later leadership roles.

That’s it. Two lines of roles, one short statement tying it to your current level.

You’re not erasing your past, you’re compressing it.

What To Drop Without Mercy

Let me be blunt. Here’s what I cut constantly from senior and executive CVs.

1. Responsibilities that read like job descriptions

If I can copy-paste your bullet into any generic job ad, it’s dead weight.

“Responsible for managing a team of 10 engineers.”

Cool. Did anything happen? Did they ship? Did they quit? Did they grow? Did the business notice?

Make it:

“Led 10-person engineering team to deliver 3 major platform releases in 18 months, cutting incident rates by 40% and improving NPS from 32 to 52.”

Same job. Completely different signal.

2. Old tech, tools, and buzzwords

If you’re going for a VP role and your long career resume still has a dedicated “Technical Skills” list featuring Excel, PowerPoint, and obsolete tools from 2010, you’re clogging the pipe.

Modern trick: keep tools integrated into your bullets when they matter at scale.

“Built exec reporting in Power BI used by CEO and board to track weekly revenue, margin, and churn.”

Now the tool is context, not the hero.

3. Training sections longer than your achievements

I once saw a senior resume where the “Training & Certifications” section took half a page.

No. Absolutely not.

Certifications can matter, but if they push your actual results down the page, they’re mispriced. Shrink them to 2–3 lines. Keep only what’s credible and current.

4. Objective statements and fluff skills

Kill “Objective.” Kill “hardworking, proactive, self-starter, team player.”

You’re senior. Your impact proves your traits. Or it doesn’t.

How To Handle Promotions Without Wasting Space

Promotions are gold on a senior resume, but people present them terribly.

Instead of listing the same company 3 times with repeated bullets, merge intelligently.

Messy version

Company X

Senior Manager, 2020–2022

• 6 bullets

Manager, 2017–2020

• 6 bullets

Senior Analyst, 2014–2017

• 6 bullets

That’s 18 bullets for one employer. No recruiter is reading that.

Cleaner version for a two page resume

Company X
Senior Manager → Director, Operations & Strategy, 2014–2022

Promoted 3 times in 8 years to lead global operations across 4 regions and a 120-person team.

• Led expansion from 1 to 4 regions, growing revenue from $35M to $110M while holding operating margin above 20%.
• Built and scaled a central operations team from 8 to 45 people, introducing standard playbooks that cut launch time by 35%.
• Introduced quarterly portfolio review with CFO and CCO, surfacing unprofitable lines and driving exit or re-price decisions that added $6.5M annual profit.

If you really need to tease out earlier responsibilities, add one summarizing bullet:

• Earlier roles focused on analytics and process design, including building the first performance dashboard that became the backbone for global ops reporting.

You just compressed 3 roles into one coherent growth story. That’s how you win the two-page war.

The Metric Test: What Stays, What Goes

Here’s my favorite filtering trick when cutting a long career resume down to a tight executive CV.

I ask one question of every bullet:

Can I attach a credible metric or clear outcome to this?

If the answer is “no,” I either:

• Pair it with something that has a metric, or
• Kill it

Not every bullet needs a number, but every bullet needs a consequence.

Compare these:

“Led strategic planning process across 3 departments.”
vs.
“Led annual strategic planning across 3 departments, consolidating 27 competing initiatives into 9 funded bets, which lifted focus on top-line growth and contributed to 18% revenue increase year-on-year.”

Same activity. Different value.

At senior level, vague impact reads like no impact.

If you truly can’t find outcomes for a role, that role probably belongs in the compressed section, not the detailed one.

Early-Career Roles: The Art Of Respectful Erasure

Let’s talk about your first job. Yes, the one where you were a junior analyst, assistant, intern, trainee, whatever.

Do hiring managers care?

Barely.

What they care about:

• That you have a coherent trajectory
• That you didn’t spend 8 years stuck in the same entry-level role
• That your story doesn’t have big unexplained gaps

So for early-career roles, your job is to reassure, not impress.

Patterns I like:

Option 1: Compressed early-career block Early Career Experience

Analyst & Associate roles across consulting and financial services, 2004–2010, focused on analytics, reporting, and client delivery. Built strong quantitative skills and comfort working with senior stakeholders under pressure.

Simple. Clean. Signals the foundation.

Option 2: Single-line roles

Business Analyst, Company Y, 2006–2008
Operations Associate, Company Z, 2004–2006

No bullets. Just there to complete the timeline.

If a role is:

• More than 15 years old
• Not central to your current value prop
• Not obviously prestigious

…it probably does not deserve detailed bullets on a two page resume.

You’re not running for historian of your own life. You’re competing for a job.

How This Actually Plays Out On The Page

Let me sketch how I’d expect a strong senior resume or executive CV to look when we’re done hacking it down to two pages.

Page 1:

• Name, contact (clean, no full address novel)
• Sharp executive summary (like the sample earlier)
• 6–10 key skills / focus areas in one line or two, not a encyclopedia
• 2–3 most recent roles in depth, with heavy leadership and metrics

Top of Page 2:

• Remaining mid-career roles, compressed but still with outcomes
• Biggest education item (and maybe 1–2 high-value extras: MBA, relevant exec program)

Bottom of Page 2:

• Early career condensed
• Light certifications / boards / selected speaking, if relevant

Everything you include has to earn its rent. If a line doesn’t increase my confidence that you can deliver at the level I’m hiring for, it’s gone.

I know, it feels like you’re chopping off limbs. You’re not. You’re carving a statue out of a block. The excess stone was never the point.

Your last 6–10 years tell me whether I’d trust you with a team, a P&L, or a roadmap tomorrow.

Your first job just tells me you were willing to start at the bottom, like the rest of us.

Guess which one I’m actually hiring for.