Interviewing can be very expensive and time consuming, especially if your candidate pool is national. When I was in NJ most candidates got flown in, here in the Valley more are local. We telephone screen to cut down on losers, but even that takes a lot more time than making a call on a complete resume.
My HR people never did more than a very preliminary keyword sort. I’d be very unhappy with any who tried to make decisions about qualifications - none ever have, I’m happy to say.
I like the type that Nava mentioned. I have interviewed people whose resumes mention development of something that sounded really interesting - and which turned out to be a trivial class project. That was a waste of time. I absolutely want to see details on what people did in their jobs, to see if they have the experience for what I’m looking for. For people right out of school I do want to see information about significant class projects. For anyone with an MS or PhD, I want to see professors’ names. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a resume padded with junk jobs. But I never hired fry cooks either.
So, mean time in a job doesn’t count for a secretary? Does being on law review in law school not count? How about internships? A lot of things on resumes can be an indicator of character.
Heh. I just hired a secretary. Ran an ad in the local paper once. Had over 100 resumes within a week. Everything from kids right out of high school to one guy that had a M.S. in organic chemistry. First cut was tossing everything that didn’t have some connection to a law-related function. Second cut was people that did things like list “SexyMcHottie@freeemail.com” as their email address.
Law review is meaningless for my purposes. I need litigators, not research drones. For lawyers, I look first for court experience.
Another notable exception is from the U.S.'s largest employer – the federal government.
There’s a lengthy form that you can use in lieu of a resume. But you are also permitted to submit a resume. HOWEVER - if you use a resume, it has to be formatted just-so, with designated headers & footers. And they want EVERYTHING you ever did to be on that resume. You cut your neighbor’s yard for money the summer you were 14? It goes on the resume.
Basically, you take everything Oakmister would say about making a resume and reverse it 
The gov’t loves them some 15-page novellas. Still not sure anyone actually reads all that, though.
Caveat: I’m not in HR. I’m in product management, but do a lot of vetting of candidates for upper management (mostly because I’ll have to work with them). In general, if I see more than two pages, I get one or a combination of the following impressions:
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Jobs in my field rely heavily on easy-to-understand, concise writing. If a resume is more than two pages, they probably can’t write concisely. (As an aside, a resume that’s not only long, but full of words like “incentivize,” “utilize,” “out-of-the-box” will get thrown in the trash when I’m making the decisions.)
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They’re full of themselves or giving me minutae I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about (for example, I recently reviewed a resume for product management with a list of that individual’s hobbies; I don’t care if they like to take long walks or not; can they do the job?).
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If the resume is really long and the candidate has a habit of job-hopping (switching jobs every year or less for 3 or more years in a row), but they’re not a consultant and not in the financial or manufacturing sector, I will assume that they can’t keep a job or get bored easily and may be unreliable.
That’s just my two cents, though.
If I were looking for resume advice, I would trust people who are involved in hiring in my field, and people who have successfully landed a job in my field.
Why would I trust you on this one if your long resume has left you unemployed for months? I hope you didn’t pay too much for the resume courses.
If you merit a ten page resume, I’ve already heard of you.
Leaffan, didn’t you also recently advise that absolutely no one wears suits to interviews anymore? Exactly what job hunting courses are you taking?
What’s the difference between 2 years and 10 years of a McJob on a resume? Nothing - it takes up just as much room, give or take a line or two. If your resume doesn’t indicate the duration of your employment, then I think I’ve figured out why you haven’t gotten any calls back… As for college leadership ability - if you have been unable to express that leadership ability in the first few jobs on your resume, then your college leadership isn’t worth jack shit. “So - you were the head of the Hall Leadership Council and was the Programmer on the Activities Board. But you’ve spent the last 5 years in a job taking no leadership initiative at all…” Good luck with that.
I agree completely with Rhodes.
I have a one page CV, which has got me an interview every time I’ve applied for a job. 
The jobs have included Computer Programmer, Lecturing, Teaching and running a National Chess Federation.
The point of a short CV is:
- it’s easy to read
- it shows you can summarise well
- it shows you understand that the point of a CV is to get an interview; that’s where you can express yourself in more detail
When a Personnel Manager gets 100 CV’s for one job, he disposes instantly of:
- long ones
- handwritten ones
- ones with typos
I was at a bar over the weekend with the Special Lady Friend. She motions to me to check out the guy at the bar updating his LinkedIn account and resume. Under one job experience, he was populating a huge list of what appeared to be the most meaningless, buzzwordy sentences I’ve ever read. “Manifested conceptualizations of marketing connections” or some such bullshit. And not just confusing/meaningless - they had the bonus of being able to reproduce in front of your eyes every 4-5 seconds.
I think seeing something like that would make my eyes bleed. Kind of like when a candidate informed me that she was “Deeply committed to conceptualizing meaningful initiatives in collaboration with cross-functional departmental figures to maximize potential.” I knew what it meant, but I had her repeat it for me anyway because I’d never actually heard that much jargon all together in the same sentence.
You getting a lot of interviews with that 10 page resume? I highly doubt there is anything you can put on 10 pages that you can’t condense to 2 or 3 max. I sometimes get these tech resumes that go on for pages. I don’t care about the minutae of every project that person ever worked.
Quite frankly, in my current job search, before I even send a resume, I’ve already had at least a couple conversations with people at the firm I’m applying. By the time I send in my resume, the people who see it already have a basic idea of what I’m about.
No.
All I want to know is:
Where you went to school
What you studied
Any academic honors you received
Any relevant internships or work study programs
Clubs or athletic activities you were involved in
Whether you held some sort of position of leadership
I don’t really care about McJobs unless you were a supervisor or won Employee of the Month or something. Mostly they are just useful for indicated you did something during the summers instead of watch tv. And even then, I might be like “why didn’t you work in something related to your field”?
From my experience in HR, and having seen a lot of resumes, these are the guidelines I give when people ask.
If you’re in academia, there is no limit on pages. List every publication, academic presentation, etc. Most people in academia already know this. This is also the norm in some non-US locations. The rest of the advice is US-specific.
If you have less than a Master’s degree and less than 10 years’ experience, keep it to 1 page.
If you have a Master’s degree or 10 years’ experience, 2 pages are permissible, but not necessarily better than 1 page. Plenty of times the person who gets the job, or the resume that stands out as the best, will be one page even for this type of job.
The best thing your resume can have is work experience similar to what you are applying to do prominently displayed near the top of the resume.
I was echoing the dismissive view of summer jobs. Actually, if I was hiring out of college, which I never have, I’d find that being invited back to the job in subsequent summers would be a pretty good sign of competence. I have seen resumes with lots of job hopping, which makes me suspicious. People do get laid off, but if you keep hiring into flaky companies, I’m going to be suspicious.
Just to be clear, I’ve always had > 2 page resumes, and have never had any problem finding a job, though I’ve only had 3 in 30 years. I’m speaking as someone who has looked at a lot of resumes in my time, not someone who has sent a lot out. Of course everything on your resume has to be relevant, but I wouldn’t throw out relevant items to keep it under two pages.
Remember in the ST:TOS episode “Court Martial” where the computer starts reading off a long list of Kirk’s medals and awards? Well over a page, but sometimes those things are worth putting down.
I think my CV is 3.5 pages, it’s for teaching post-secondary art classes. One page is a long list of art shows I have been in- most colleges and universities look for a strong exhibition history. Another page is the classes I have taught and descriptions, since they are sometimes vague like “Intro to Studio Art” or “Conceptual Art Exploration I”. The half page is professional references, which most employers ask for. There’s no way I could condense this down to 1 or 2 pages.
Though I agree with having a resume that’s only two pages max I do think technology created this monster. People feel like they MUST put minutia on their resumes because of the huge reliance on keyword searches to whittle the pile down right away. Let me give you a simple example. If I put " Developed software that does cool things" and the HR rep or hiring manager over specifies their search to “Look for C++” and I haven’t mentioned the language I programed in I will be cut before ever being considered. ( don’t focus on the specifc example of programming as I know you would probably say you used C. I was just illustrating a point). Basically people don’t want to be disregarded solely because they didn’t have the exact word the searcher was thinking of while searching.
That said though anything over two is too much.
Well, very interesting replies.
Firstly, my resume is not 10 pages, it was 3, and is now 5 but is being modified accordingly for each position to which I’m applying. Secondly, the sarcastic remarks are helpful and enlightening, but in very bad taste in these economic times. You think I’m unemployed because my resume is slightly longer than preferred? You think maybe there aren’t, ohhh, about 15,000 high-tech workers in my region looking for jobs?
I have a very diversified history in high-tech manufacturing in progressively senior roles up to management level reaching over 25 years. Frankly summarizing this is in one page is impossible. Three pages, including education is possible; two pages would be absurd, and one totally out of the question.
Maybe some of you 25 or 30 year olds with 2 jobs to fall back on could get away with it; I can’t. Which is why I said that your resume needs to be as long as it needs to be. Of course I know what trivial shit to cut out, however I’ve done a lot of interesting stuff over 25 years and the need to express accomplishments in these areas is warranted.
Since I went back to school for a career change, and since I was by and large out of the workforce during that time, I use a functional resume. My skills are listed on the first page, and my academic achievements and leadership positions are listed on the second page, along with my employment. So far, it’s gotten me a lot of callbacks.
The advantage of a functional resume is that I don’t necessarily have to tailor it for every potential employer since it lists generalizable skills and not specific tasks. I’ve also gotten past most automated screening programs and generally get callbacks.
Leaffan, I will pass along a bit of advice and experience. When I was tailoring my resume to specific jobs, I often had problems getting past HR people who assumed that my broadcasting experience wasn’t relevant to the job being filled, because HR reps aren’t always able to apply skills outside the field to the actual needs of the position. Once I changed my resume, I could demonstrate that I am not afraid of public speaking; that I can learn very difficult software and technical processes; that I can make split-second decisions; and that I can work with a team and adapt my role based on feedback from the other team members. These are skills that are very valuable in any job, whether it’s in broadcasting or not. It’s all in how you word it. 
Hey, thanks Robyn. I’m open to any and all constructive criticism and ideas. It’s the sarcastic know-it-all-bullshit of some posters I can do without, at this point in time. I’ve thought about the skill-set/functional resume style. I’ll look into it further,
Cheers.