HR sends resumes to me already sorted Internal and External, so I look at Internals first. From there, I usually read the cover letter with a fair bit of interest – and look at the resume proper if the writer has advised me how their specific experience relates to the posted position. That tells me that the person has taken the trouble to try and figure out what it is I’m looking for, and isn’t just throwing resumes around in a generic fashion. I don’t really care how long the resume is or is not if the cover letter is a good one.
In my experience being the interviewee, I have also found that interviewers more often refer to what I’ve written in the cover letter than what is in the resume itself. Except for some reason without exception people always mention the private pilot’s license, which is tucked away under “other achievements” and bears no relation to my chosen profession of health care administration – but never fails to spark interest.
Another less is more person here, when I was hiring test engineers I’d get my share of 8-11 pagers and I can attest I stopped reading after page 3. If you can’t tell me your pertinant info by that time I’m not interested. I don’t need to know the 15 other jobs you’ve held.
Curiously I found that a great number of really big resumes came from people of Indian descent, so I wonder if it’s just common for them to list every piece of experience they have in India when applying rather than going for brevity. (Just to quell the argument I’m not talking a small sample size here, I probably had to review 300-400 resumes in a 2 year period with at least half or more being from Indians).
For the rest of you: How on Earth could you possibly condense your CV/Resume (they’re synonyms in this part of the world) down to one page?
I saw a lot of CVs when I was working as a retail assistant manager, and if I ever saw one that was only a single page my first thought would usually be “Wow, they haven’t done much, have they?”
I mean, one page would (on most Australian CVs that I’ve seen) just about cover the person’s name, contact details, educational history, and most recent job. And that’s in general terms, lacking in any real information that might enable you to decide if they’re worth interviewing. You can’t really gloss over McJobs here (I’ve tried- unless they were from years ago potential employers still want to know what you’ve been doing), so that means most CVs I’ve seen here run to between 2 and 4 pages.
When I applied for a Government Position recently (as an administration officer with a branch of the State Government) I had to write a 2,500 word application addressing a bunch of Key Selection Criteria (that an applicant’s suitability for should have been immediately apparent by reading their CV), submit a CV that basically included every job I’ve had for the past five years, and at least three references, one of whom had to be a current supervisor and the others had to be previous supervisors or Senior Personnel from previous employers.
But yeah, all I can say is that a one page CV would not, IME, contain anything like enough information to decide whether someone was worth an interview.
All of this takes up about 4 inches on my resume (which includes undergrad and grad school). What horrible sort of formatting do they have over there?!?
I think the culture of different places has a lot to do with it. As is obvious from this thread, Canadian and American employers expect something short in a candidate’s resume. Something lengthy will often be ignored. But if Australian employers expect to see lengthy multi-page resumes, then that’s what the candidate should provide.
I’m thinking of an Australian friend of mine. When he arrived in Canada, he set about trying to get a job. His nine-page resume (he was an electrician) wasn’t doing him much good at all, and he couldn’t figure out why. This resume had wrked well in Australia, after all. It took repeatedly telling him to shorten it to no more than two pages before he did it–and started gettng interviews.
Congratulations, Savannah! And great line, Shodan.
This thread convinces me, as others have said, that mileage must vary widely by professional field. I, like Oakminster, am in the legal field and have served on many muh-annny hiring committees, and it is the very rare resume of more than 2 pages that I would not summarily toss aside. In my field, a resume of that length indicates a less-than-stable work history or an an inability to express yourself clearly and succintly – neither of which is plus for the applicant.
But what I don’t understand is why some people seem to think that the best solution is a “kitchen sink” resume that lists every skill or job, regardless of relevancy to the position applied for, even if that takes you to 3+ pages. When I was in the market for a job, I basically had several resumes: one that emphasized my litigation history and skills; one that emphasized my management history and skills; one for writing (creative and legal); etc. The only upside I see to a truly comprehensive resume that runs to great lengths, is that it is easier for the applicant, who can use it to apply for everything. But guess what: When I was hiring, I didn’t care what was easiest for the applicant. I wanted to see resumes that indicated the best fit for the job and for our organization – and in my field, that emphatically did not include any one who couldn’t boil down their education and relevant work history to two pages. So my recommendation is to tailor the resume to the position you’re applying for without sacrificing either brevity or clarity, so long as that’s the standard expectation in your field. It is in mine.
Field-dependent: for federal service, every job going back 15 years is required. So a 34-year-old that waited tables in college is required to list the restaurant job even if she’s had 10+ years of stellar professional experience afterward.
It truly amazes me how so many people are so proud of willfully ignoring pertinent information, because it would require them to to work. “I decided to hire the people who’s previous work I knew nothing concrete and detailed about, because I’m lazy” I no better than “Yeah when I was a juror, I pretty much ignored the two weeks of testimony because it wasn’t that interesting to invest my time. I just daydreamed then decided the case on the closing arguments, any good lawyer should be able to summarize concisely.”
I am so glad I did get into IT where things arn’t so arbitrary. An IT resume follows the example of any good Informational document. Summarize the highlights, then give all the detailed and useful information the person might require with minimum follow-up requests.
It’s interesting that you so freely attribute to “laziness” anything that doesn’t conform to your personal analysis of how things should be done, especially in fields that admittedly are not your own. The last attorney search I worked on yielded 150 applicants for one lateral hire position – and that was before the economy truly tanked. Perhaps in your field, or your personal job, you have time to carefully review 150 resumes to see if perhaps on page 3 or 4 the applicant got around to mentioning pertinent information, but I never had that kind of time, I was too busy doing my own job. Furthermore, some of the most important skills a lawyer must have (at least in litigation) are the ability to capture your audience’s attention (be it judge or jury) and to make your necessary points persuasively, clearly, and briefly. Long resumes do not indicate the ability to do any of those things.
But since we’re throwing around loaded terms like “lazy,” I suspect you personally are simply too lazy to tailor your resume for each job you might be applying for, preferring to just submit a boilerplate one while rationalizing that it is somehow inherently “better” and making a virtue of your inability to reduce your relevant experience in a way that is BOTH to the point and requires a minimum of follow-up requests.
Now, I could be wrong, since your field isn’t my own, but if that minor point doesn’t prevent you from making snotty assumptions, I guess I won’t let it stop me either.
Yes you are lazy. if you are going to throw away a resume because it has too many pages.
Applicant A has summary Content ‘X’ on page 1 and ‘Y’ on Page 2
Applicant B has summary Content ‘X’ on page 1 and ‘Y’ on page 2, As well as detail Content ‘W’ ,‘Z’,‘U’,and ‘V’ on pages 3-6 respectively.
You are going to throw out Applicant B because you are too lazy to bother reading for content, and not going to see if B is a great fit for the job because he did more and better work.
A Third grader can summarize concisely. “First Scrooge was a cheap and bad man, then he was visited by ghosts, who scared him, and he became a good man”
I don’t know how you do it, but when I review tons of resumes I can do the first pass without looking hard at page 3. if a candidate doesn’t put the most important information early, that is good enough reason for rejection. If you have to read all of 150 resumes, you either have a great talent pool to choose from or poor filtering skills.
Once I’ve got the pool down to a dozen or fewer, the extra information on the later pages is very useful in helping me to decide which candidate should be called first, and which isn’t as good as my first impression. I’ve never thrown out a resume that is too long. I might throw out one filled with irrelevant junk, but I’ve never seen one.
Plus, in my shop job postings on our web site are often out of date, and the newest jobs aren’t up yet, or just got put up. Someone tailoring a resume for a specific job might be losing out on the real job. Tailoring for the company, absolutely, and tailoring for the job if you know the job is still open, but without that personal contact it is better to be a bit broader. That’s another reason to network.
These are new iterations of Applicants A & B. Previously, from descriptions in this thread, I would have described them thusly:
Applicant A has biographical information on page 1, along with Jobs A-D information. Page 2 has Jobs E-G, and a few interests and/or skills and proficiencies.
Applicant B has biographical information on page 1, along with Job A information. Page 2 has Jobs B-C information (each with 12-15 lines of detail). Page 3 has Jobs D-F information…Page 7 has Jobs O-Q information.
And you are lazy, and none too bright, to refuse to tailor your materials to present the summary content on pages 1 and 2 and to hold the detailed content for when it is necessary or relevant, which in my field is not at the resume stage. We are of course talking about my field, since unlike you I’ve never asserted any basis to say how things should be done in yours.
I don’t in fact have to read all 150 resumes. Anyone looking for a non-partner-level attorney job in a general practice who cannot distill down what I need to know into two pages, is not demonstrating the skills I am looking for. It is a strike against them. But yes, at 150 applicants, the talent pool is deep enough for me to cull at will. Too long? Out. More than one typo, or an egredious typo? Out. Resume is cutesy? Out. I could overlook any number of things if I was strapped for candidates, but I’m not, my field, and my organization, is highly competitive. My filtering skills are great.
Well, that’s you. For me, for the resume of an entry-level or lateral hire, or support staff, if the information is important or persuasive, then it doesn’t belong on the third page. If it’s on the third page, then it indicates a lack of organizational ability or judgment that is a negative, not a positive. Or it indicates too many jobs, which is also not a positive. I don’t have time to go back through for a second impression and no organization I’ve ever worked for calls candidates in order of preference; the interview slots are filled by the scheduler based on who can come when.
When does previous work expereince become relevant? After they are hired? Or do you prefer to dick around with inviting them in , and giving them some hope, before you say unqualified to their faces and waste thieir time?
Are you parsing Jodi’s statements to say that she doesn’t want any previous work experience on the resume? Or does your field not conduct interviews at any point? I honestly have no idea at this point what resume form you’re trying to bash.
The type of resume Jodi is looking for (I’m assuming), would contain all relevant work experience - it just doesn’t exhaustively list every minute detail of that experience. If you can’t explain what position you held in 3-4 lines, then you are terrible at summarization. And detail beyond 3-4 lines on a particularly relevant job would certainly come out in an interview (“ah - it says here you clerked for a judge at the Court of Appeals level for a year. Tell me about that.”).
As if those are the only choices. In fact, I go with what’s behind Door No. 3, Monty, which is to interview only those who BOTH list their relevant work experience AND manage to do so clearly and concisely. Your argument seems to be that doing both is an impossibility. In my field, it’s not an impossibility, it’s a necessity.
I’ll admit from the outset that I’ve never gotten a job from a resume but the 1 - 2 page rule is only effective when the HR person has to be reviewing hundreds of resumes. There are plenty of highly specialized jobs in which you’re only ever reviewing a few candidates, in which case, more information is always preferred.
I’ve worked on a bunch of research projects in the past and they’re on my resume, these are effectively impossible to summarize without losing crucial detail. My resume is only two pages but only because I’ve moved towards a more portfolio style approach to presenting my work. I basically give a one line summary of each project I’ve worked on and then point to my website for more details.
Also, coming from a design background, I think it’s more important to have the appropriate amount of whitespace rather than trying to cram everything into n pages. There might be the same amount of text on a 3 page resume as you do on a 2 page but it’s been arranged so it’s easy to scan.
