For most people, a CV should go back about 10–15 years , focusing on your most recent and relevant roles rather than everything you’ve ever done.

Quick Scoop: Short Answer

  • Standard guidance:
    • 10 years for mid-level professionals.
    • Up to 15 years for senior or specialist roles.
    • Earlier experience can be summarized briefly or moved to an “Earlier career” section.
  • Main idea: Prioritize recent, relevant experience and keep the document easy to skim, usually 1–2 pages.

By Career Stage

  • Student / recent graduate
    • Include internships, part-time work, projects, volunteering, and any roles that show transferable skills, even if that’s only 1–5 years back.
* School achievements and relevant coursework can take more space because your work history is short.
  • Mid-level professional (around 5–15 years)
    • Focus on roles from roughly the last 10 years, adding older roles only if highly relevant.
* Trim early jobs to one line each (title, company, dates) without bullet points.
  • Senior / executive / specialist
    • Often show 15 years, sometimes a bit more if older roles clearly prove progression or deep expertise.
* Very old roles can be grouped under headings like “Earlier career” with no dates or minimal details.

Why Not List Everything?

  • Relevance drops for older jobs, and recruiters care most about what you have done lately and how it matches the target role.
  • Very long histories can raise age-discrimination risk and make your CV harder to scan quickly, which hurts you in fast-paced screening.
  • Keeping to 10–15 years usually keeps the CV at 1–2 pages, which aligns with common recruiter expectations.

Practical Rules of Thumb

  • If a job ad asks for a specific number of years (for example, 5 or 8), make sure your CV clearly covers at least that span, even if that means going slightly beyond your usual cutoff.
  • If older experience is crucial (for example, a long-running project or niche technology), mention it briefly or highlight it in the summary instead of fully detailing a 20‑year-old job.
  • Education can usually be shortened once you have substantial experience; often just the highest degree, institution, and location are enough.

Mini TL;DR

  • Aim for 10–15 years of history.
  • Emphasize what’s most relevant to the job you want.
  • Summarize or omit very old, unrelated roles rather than listing everything.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.