Very wise John,
I have been involved in loads of staff hiring and I can say that it is a daunting task. Some Monday mornings as many as 100 CVs would be dumped on my desk to go through, all of different paper sizes, lengths, and with varying degrees of language competence (obvious non natural English speakers were treated individually though). Going through them normally took all morning and was a task I hated, not because the CVs were not interesting in themselves but because of the sheer volume of work. Also, there was a great responsibility to ensure that you gave each applicant a fair chance of obtaining a position with the company- a life changing event for many of them. Plus the fact that we needed the staff.
We were instructed to do a coarse initial sort of CVs and put them into two heaps, yes and no. We didn't even need to give a reason why a particular CV had gone in the no heap which would be simply returned to Human Factors and the applicants would get a standard 'dear John' letter. This sort was based on the impression the first page created. The yes pile would then be further investigated. We would have to give a reason why an applicant was rejected from the initial yes heap. The point here is that the initial impression your CV gives is vital and although you may have sweated days over polishing your CV, it simply may not be read if the initial impression is negative.
So what is the correct first impression? Firstly, your CV must be instantly comprehensible- no fancy fonts, must have adequate size characters, no pink blue purple paper, or colored characters. And above all it must have high quality printing and be on standard size paper: A4 in Europe, including UK and the equivalent in your country. These points may seem obvious, but it is surprising how often that they are wrong.
What to put on your CV? The answer is simple: Why should a company want to employ you. That is the only question you need to address. You may be passionate about bee keeping, you may have national awards in bee keeping. Bee keeping may be your life. Perversely, these may be good reasons why you may not get employed: if you are that passionate about bee keeping how much time are you going to spend thinking about work.
So what is good: high quality paper. succinct description of you: age etc. what sort of person are you. Your skills and experience, especially any that relate specifically to the target company's area of operations. Be positive. List your qualifications.
As John says, some CVs, especially academic, need to be very long. Academia generally has more time than industry and I would guess that these CVs would relate to high positions. Even though a CV may need to be long, it should still be well structured so that it can be either skimmed or read in full according to the assessor's objectives. This may sound impossible to do but it is not.
You simply would not believe some CVs that people send out.
The best I saw opened, 'My mother didn't like me'
'I ran a large project but it overran and I got the blame but it wasn't my fault.'
'I am a scout troop leader.'
And one that was printed on pink paper with tiny purple script font that was illegible.
There are now loads of excellent books that show how to write a good CV and give a range of templates that you can simply copy. Make no mistake, a CV is vital for getting the job you want and also writing a good CV it is no mean task. There is only one better way of getting a job and that is by having a contact that can recommend you. Having a father who is the managing director (MD) of the company would also help.
Just to show how perverse life is though, some of the best engineers had the worst CVs and probably the best CV I ever saw belonged to one of the worst engineers.
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PS: part two of this, the interview, also has some vital aspects that need to be addressed to help you clinch the deal and secure a job.
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