[sanswork]

If you have 20+ years of experience on your CV it's a shit CV. Why would anyone hiring care what you were doing over 20 years ago?

I'm wondering what else was wrong with it that you didn't get a single response in 2 years of trying. Were you including unique cover letters? Where were you finding the jobs you were applying to? Did you try going through a recruiter?

[jamhan]

And now we get to the crux of the matter. I wonder how old you are? Why is it that in IT broad long-term experience is considered irrelevant? If you have not done exactly that something in the past six months you might as well not exist. I love the conversations with recruiters/companies that go something like this:

Them: I see you you used technologies X,Y,Z in your last job. Me: Yes, and <I explain in further detail what that entailed> Them: Did you use <some tangential A-framework> with technology-X at all? Me: No, I used B-framework because reasons. Them: You are dead to us.

BTW, I find it puzzling you are focusing specifically on my perceived failure in the job market rather than the topic of the original post.

[sanswork]

I'm in my mid-30s and I don't care how old you are I've worked with many excellent programmers in their 50s and 60s and learned tons from all of them.

Broad long-term experience isn't considered irrelevant it's just not needed on a CV. If you haven't done it in the past 5 years you're probably just not that skilled at it anymore and if you have it's already on the CV in the newer role.

Are you just imagining those conversations because you said in 2 years you never made it to the interview stage.

You are blaming your failure on the topic of the original post so it is relevant.

[jamhan]

I was talking about actual in-the-flesh interviews, which are the only ones that count in the end. Recruiters/companies often do phone "interviews" or "pre-screenings" or whatever and those were the "conversations" I was referring to. So now you've called me a liar as well as having called my CVs "shit". What a pleasant co-worker you must be.

Edit: On that note, perhaps you could post somewhere an anonymised version of your CV so we can all benefit from the pinnacle of CV design.

[sanswork]

So you've had interviews?

You shouldn't be so defensive of your CV but I apologize if I was rude. Plenty of mine were shit over the years too. I've had to read thousands over the years and discuss them with others so I have some idea of what turns hiring managers off. There is no need for that much history on a CV regardless of your age. You want your CV to tell the hiring person you can do the job. A full listing of all your work history doesn't do that it just adds pages to the print out that aren't going to be read and will probably annoy the person for having to scroll through them all since I assume you include other information at the end. 20+ year old educational qualifications don't do that. 5 years outside of uni you should drop it unless you have some particularly special and amazing qualification. Tell them if they ask.

I haven't needed a CV for like a decade now but rest assured my last one was pretty shit too.