I’ve been going through and updating my resume, and I’m finding it a little tough to keep it to one page these days. What’s the generally accepted rule of thumb for when going over one page is acceptable?
Why not use more than one page if that’s how much is required to give the relevant details? All of the ones that I see are more than one page in length.
Agreed. I’ve never bought into the stigma of having a two page resume. Mine has been two pages since having a resume has been useful for me.
If the information you need to put on there requires two pages, then it’s acceptable to use two pages.
I would say, if you’ve been in the professional working world for 5 years or less, than it’s a little excessive to have more than one page. 5 or more years = 2 pages. For really high-level executive types, more than 2 is acceptable.
I asked for job-search tips here awhile back (for graduates of the nursing program) and one of the many helpful hints for resumes was to “bundle” prior experience if it’s in the same field. That can help shorten a resume, if that’s what you want to do.
A two-page resume that repeats the same stuff but with different employers might look padded.
You guys use c.v.'s, though don’t you? Those are typically longer than resumes.
From what I can tell, these days two-page resumes are okay if you are well beyond entry level, but it doesn’t hurt to ask if your prospective employer will accept them.
The reason is that employers don’t want to read through a hundred 2+ page resumes. I had one guy send in a resume that was like 8 pages long.
People have the misconception that they need to put everything they have ever done on their resume. Less is usually more. You should condense it down to as short and as relevant as possible.
I’ve always heard the one-page rule in regard to 99% of the jobs out there. My understanding of C.V. is that it is used in scientific and academic circles; among other things, it would list the applicant’s publications including a brief abstract of each. It seems reasonable to assume that employers trying to fill such jobs usually have far fewer applications to go through than typical employers in business or industry.
I have a master c.v. that has everything I’ve ever done on it - runs to several pages. Then when I’m applying for something, I make a one page résumé, tailored to the specific thing I’m applying for.
Well, like I said, if the information you need to put on there requires two pages, then do it. 8 pages is excessive, but I think 2 has become widely accepted. If I put everything I’d ever done on my resume, yeah, it might be 8 pages. But it’s 2, and I really don’t know what else I could sacrifice without starting to trim away the meat.
In Europe, I don’t think I ever heard anyone refer to a resume. They pretty much exclusively used c.v.'s for all jobs. I believe the American usage of the term is more specific and usually reserved for, as you say, scientific and academic circles. In Europe (and I don’t know if it’s the same in Australia and New Zealand, I’m just guessing the usage is similar), the term c.v. is generally used for all jobs. In fact, there’s a standardized c.v. called the Europass CV.
As an employer and as a professional helping others constuct resumes, I’ve rarely seen one that needed to be (or that I read) more than one page. General statement.
I think the biggest reason why this has been pounded into everyone’s head is because most of us really learn about doing them in our final year of college. 99.99% of college seniors have absolutely no reason to put more than 1 page of information onto a resume and it discourages college grads from fluffing them up with a bunch of meaningless pre-college jobs and even more meaningless greek letter societies and philanthropies.
The unfortunate consequence is that most of the interviewers out there were once college grads and had this pounded into their heads and therefore look down on 2-page resumes even if more senior employees in todays new economy really probably do indeed need that extra page.
I once applied at an agency that wanted to know every single moment of my working life (and I was in my 40s at the time). Others just want the relevant info. I suggest a custom resume that caters to the specifics of the position you’re applying for. Does the president of a large corporation really want to know that I worked at Mickey D’s in the early 70s? I think not!!
depends on the industry, how much time you’ve been working, how many roles, etc. There are a lot of different styles. then there are the 6 point typeface resumes that get everything onto one page - and those are lame too. there is no one size fits all.
I’d say as someone who has gone through thousands of resumes, the cover email (no one does cover letters any more) is much more important. A very short, sweet, to the point email about why you want the job and how your experience is relevant is worth gold in getting someone to look at the resume.
If you have enough experience for two pages, make it two pages.
Just be sure to keep it relevant. I had a friend give me a 10 page resume to give to my HR. He was in Senior Management, but he had everything he ever worked on in there, from the first day he worked. No one would wade through that and no one, when hiring a senior executive, would care what he did as a entry-level engineer.
As someone who’s done a fair amount of hiring – I have a total preference for one page. A resume should describe the forest, not enumerate the damn trees.
Different places, different standards. When my Australian brother-in-law came to Canada, he found out the hard way that the lengthy Australian resume/CV does not work in North America. Once he shortened it, however, he started getting interviews.
I’ve had to put together a CV before at the request of an academic endeavour, and it indeed ran to numerous pages–in my case, I believe it was nine pages long. But for jobs, I use a two-pager: the first page has education (only universities, no high school) and employment history (over twenty years of that), and the second has other relevant experience. I could probably squeeze everything onto one, but I’d sacrifice readability. It’s a nice, clean, plain design; and it’s worked pretty well.
I always post this in these threads, but anyone who has a one page resume and works in IT is really hurting their chances. IT is so specialized that recruiters and hirers really want to know the details of what you have done since “Worked with Solaris, Oracle, Tomcat,SUN1, ANT Hibernate, Java, J2EE, on production systems” covers an infinite number of possibilities. You need details of what you have done, for how long, and for each job, so the Manager can see how relevanat what you have done really is. The previous quote will get you about 9000 calls from sleezy recruiters, and thrown in the trash by any Hiring manager or good recruiter.
A resume custom tailored to the job you are seeking should still be about 3 pages, if you have 10 years experience. And if you were a consultant with a bunch of 3 month contracts, it can get ugly.
When those folks who tell you “you must NEVER go over one page”, when asked to read your resume and chop off the parts that should be off, have to admit it’s uncuttable.
That’s for regular jobs, being a consultant my “normal” resume (complete work life for normal companies) is 2 pages, but the “consultant” version (consulting jobs only, for consulting firms) is 8 pages as of last count.