What do you recommend?

I’d try and steer you away from an online version, to be honest, as many tend to be rather American in their approach.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/2950896.stm
The above can be a good start, but it’s worth remembering that you might need to “tweak” the CV, either for a specific industry/specialism or for a particular job.

Oh, and top tip – Don’t lie. Seriously.

That BBC page is funny.

try to keep it to one page
…
Start off with your name, address and contact details clearly listed at the top of the page. Follow this with a profile of yourself which should include an outline of your skills, experience and immediate career goals.

After this you can put in your career history – in reverse chronological order over the past 10 years – with brief descriptions of your responsibilities and achievements. Then comes education, interests/personal details and references.

Riiiiiight. does this assume the interviewer has a microfiche reader?

Mine is on one page, size 11 font, and not particularly dense. When it started overflowing, I hacked out less important stuff.

Perhaps the reason some on here can’t get jobs is because they’re sending off their CVs in leather-bound volumes akin to the Encyclopaedia Britannica?

Can’t imagine anything worse than being in recruitment and having to sort through massive CVs. Clear, simple, and concise – no one wants to know that you were the hall monitor for 2 terms back in 1953.

My CV is 2 pages. I don’t think it’s possible to get it all onto one page without the font being tiny. How do you do it?

I went into this in detail last time we discussed this on here (about eight minutes ago), but basically I reckon it’s dependent on the industry you’re in. If you’re applying for something where you’re going to have a lot of different skillsets, it’s going to be a longer CV than if it’s a very specific role.

For instance, if you’re applying to be a bus driver, your CV is going to say “can drive a bus” and perhaps mention that you’ve got a clean PSV driving licence. I could get that on the back of a business card. Whereas, if you’re applying for a job in IT or some such, where you’re typically required to have a broad range of skills and experiences, that makes for a much longer CV.

My CV’s first page is contact details, pretentious profile overview, and a list of core skills. Everything an employer needs to know about “can he do the job” is on that first page. The next two are the usual employment and academic history etc (and is in dire need of pruning TBH).

I’ve seen single-page IT CVs and they are universally dreadful, either unreadable or written by a gibbon. If I’m looking for a candidate who is a proficient Windows and Linux sysadmin, knows Exchange inside out, has a passing knowledge of Mac desktops and can amend a Cisco ASA configuration without dropping the entire network, then a CV that says “I know about computers, me” is going in the big round file.