Hardly a day goes by that I’m not providing council on how long someone’s resume should be. Seems the length of a resume is one of those issues that can really confound job seekers. But it doesn’t have to be so hard.
The online job board Monster just ran this article where they asked a panel of experts to provide their thoughts on the weighty matter of “a one-page resume or a two-page resume?”
As someone that spends much of their day looking at resumes, here’s my thoughts and suggestions:
Two pages to me is optimal unless you are new entrant into the work world and really don’t have the content to fill two pages. One page is ok, but immediately places some doubt in my mind that you are hiding something. Definitely no longer than 2 pages. When I get one of those 6 page War & Piece dissertations with way to much detail in it, most of the time it’s going to the bottom of the pile.
Keep the summary short. Give me the two or three sentence version of what I’m going to find when I read the resume, but I don’t need 5 paragraphs.
Reverse chronological order on the jobs please. Don’t make me hunt to find your most current jobs. They need to be at the top. Depending on the position I am recruiting for, is a secondary thing to know what you were doing in detail in 1995.
Tell me specific achievements YOU had. It’s nice that the team brought in $20 million in Q2. What was your contribution to that effort? I want to know what you are bringing to our team. I’m not hiring the entire old team, just you.
Don’t list a bunch of achievements, and then just bullet point the jobs. Make it easy for me please – tell me who the company was that you worked for, during what time period, your title, and then the bullet points on YOUR achievements. Other formats get very distracting, and when you have a recruiter looking at potentially 100’s of resumes a day, you don’t want your format to make you standout – in a bad way.
Be 100% honest. Normally, if we find even a single thing that is misrepresented on your resume, you’re toast. How could I hire someone who has knowingly lied into a position of trust?? It will not work. And depending on the position itself, you may NOT have to have been a superstar that managed 50 people for 5 years. So why take the chance?
Those are some of my thoughts. How about you??
