“How long should my resume be?” and “Do I have to keep it to just one page?” are questions I get asked ALL the time. The one-page rule is coming up more often now as viral posts with images of well-known executives’ resumes showing one-page graphic-style documents make the rounds online.
Here are three tips for writing a modern and effective
resume that will win interviews.
Nix the “One-Page” Resume Rule
Unless you are a recent college graduate or have less than 5
or 10 years of experience, limiting your resume to just one page is out-dated
advice that can often hurt your chances of winning an interview.
For mid-career professionals and executives, one-page
resumes don't often give you enough room to list all of your relevant
experience, accomplishments, and context to your work. Your resume should
include examples of your value in each relevant role, as well as the scope of
your leadership responsibilities, and quantifiable results when possible. For
someone with more than 10 years of experience, this will be hard to do in just
one page without cutting important details or reducing the white space and font
size so much that it becomes hard to read.
Optimize for Online Applications & ATS Keyword
Scanners
Regardless of what stage you are in your career, one-page
resumes are not as effective at winning interviews if you plan to apply for
jobs online or upload to recruiter databases. One reason for this is that they
limit your ability to include enough skills and content to make it through the
keyword scanners.
Also, downloading a template for a highly designed one-page
resume can stand-out visually, but they lack enough space to include meaningful
content and are not read well (if at all) by the online Applicant Tracking
Systems (ATS) or keyword scanners.
I advise my clients that these modern-style graphic resumes
are great “networking” documents that you can send via e-mail or LinkedIn
message when a long-format resume would be too formal, but it’s important to
have a traditional resume as well to send to recruiters and hiring managers or
to upload when applying online.
Remember, Quality Over Quantity
So, if you can go beyond one-page, how long should
your resume be? The answer is as long as it needs to be to convey meaningful,
relevant content. For early-career professionals, that may be just one-page.
But, for mid-level and beyond, two pages is usually best. If you have several
certifications, publications, or other supporting content, it’s perfectly fine
to stretch onto three pages when needed as well.
What if you don’t quite have two-pages? That’s OKAY! If you
stop at half or three-quarters down the page, that is better than stuffing your
resume with irrelevant content to fill up the rest of the resume.