CV length conventions in UK
TL;DR - Should a CV really be no more than 2 pages? What works best for you and is it different for leadership Vs hands on technical roles.
Early on in your career you don't have much content to place in a CV, but once you're 20+ years in, particularly in IT you have so many roles, frameworks, technologies etc under your belt. You then have a challenge where some job roles (or recruiters) are very myopic in what they ask for, sometimes assuming you're not a match because your profile doesn't mention a very specific variant of a skillset. As someone who prefers contracting outside IR35 Is the advice to Taylor each CV for the roles you apply for so that you can keep your CV within the recommended 2 page limit, or do you just keep a generic that perhaps flows over 4 or more pages (keeping early career compressed and more recent verbose)?
In the last couple of years I've had a number of lucrative short 3 month contracts all with their own stacks, own domains and very different kinds of deliverables. Some roles are more about strategy and leadership influence, and other roles are more pure engineering (I really enjoy both).
I've recently noticed when applying for roles via linkedin that the AI insight/advisor will inform me of having missing skills for a particular role but when I click to see more info the "missing" skills are not missing, I just don't think anybody wants 15 page CV.
On the other side of hiring, in my last full time role I had to review CVs and interview candidates for my team and I'm pretty sure most of the CVs I read were over 2 pages. Particularly when I've wanted to hire for intermediate or senior technical roles I always feel like 2 page CV didn't give me enough context.
What are your best tips for improving the hit rate on your CV in the UK context as an IT contractor with 20+ years of experience?