In depthness of technical detail for resume

Question

I'm just curious how much technical detail it is a good idea to go into on a resume. I've seen programmers with resumes like 5 pages long but when I used to work in other fields that were more business oriented I never heard of anyone with a resume nearly this long as it seemed they would always keep things brief.

I'm just working on a resume like the one I have up: http://rickdanewebprogrammer.info/cms1/content/14/content and am trying to figure out how much space to devote to listing technical details and how much to have actual writing that outlines things about me, I found that when I edited my resume to add more "written responses" type of things that I started getting more interest from recruiters, etc

Answer 1

It depends on what language you program in. Five pages sounds very typical for a Java programmer's resume, but if you're a Perl programmer you can probably do it in one line.

The main thing is to communicate all the important points clearly on the first page. People typically won't read past the first page if you haven't already got their attention by then.

Answer 2

In my opinion, a good resume should not be an essay, key points covering technical experience on the first page to get some interest, and a second page with some detail of previous posts/projects is more than enough...

With the number of applicants these days, I know that no one will be reading a 5 page C.V.

Short, sharp and to the point, in my opinion.

Answer 3

I believe this solely depends on the recruiters at the company you try to get a job at. For example at Google they like to know everything and they like if you include numbers (i.e. you increased the speed of a website by 33%, or whatever). They also want to know what personal projects did you have, if you did freelancing and so on.

Anyway, recruiters are human and you can ask them how much detail you want. Usually they even like if you can ask questions properly.

My 2c.