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I try to keep my resume as current as possible and the question always comes up. How do you include your relevant experience and skill sets while at the same time keeping your resume as brief as possible?

Some say resumes should not be more than a page long, some say no more than two. Yet I have read that even three is acceptable but four is stretching it.

What are your comments about this never ending argument? How can you cover all of your bases and still keep your resume as brief as possible?

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Never more than 2 no matter how much experience you have…

Switch to a functional resume at that point instead of chronological…

Then at the end you can list your employers in chronological order with the least amount of details…

To not show your age, don’t go back past 20 yrs…

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I’ve been at my job for almost 17 years, so the major projects I’ve done end up taking up the first page (I could and should probably find a way to trim that down). I also moved my tech skills up to the top of the first page instead (not sure if that was a good idea).

Page 2 is just a chronological listing of my previous jobs (compared to my current job, I didn’t do anything significant or anything that’s currently relevant at those jobs), followed by my education and certs.

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1 to 2 pages of functional experience with “education, certifications and references available upon request” at the end…

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Wherever I’ve gone for an interview, I’ve always received compliments from multiple people in the organization regarding the format and content of my resume.

It has hovered at 2.5 pages for a number of years.

Page 1: Contact info, brief summary of my experience, work history snapshot, skills

Page 2: Detailed work history (of my last three jobs and one liners for past ones)

Page 3: Certifications and education

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Another commonly discussed topic in this area. Let’s cover a few things:

  • Is page count is really relevant in this day of online submissions?

  • A resume may extend longer, if the position being applied to wants some information regarding written works, articles, or relevant academic research.

  • You resume should reflect your years of experience. If you have only had one IT job and you think that you have five pages of experience to demonstrate a only two or three years of experience, you have my attention to read through it, but I’ll likely discard it. Why? You are, in my opinion, likely demonstrating that you have an over-inflated sense of self worth aka a big ego. I’d interpret your confidence as being cocky.

I think there are considerations that the applicant and the reviewer that need to have to be realistic. What is your skill level versus the skill level of the position? Is your resume something that is aesthetically attractive (aka not full of large amounts of white space)? Do you have completely unnecessary items in your resume that are just filler?

Things I don’t need to see:

  • Your physical address. Believe me, I don’t need to know where you live. The only contact information I need from you is your name, phone number, and e-mail address. I’m not physically mailing you anything. It’s an unnecessary expense for hiring a person.

  • An objective? Seriously? Your objective is you want the job. Your reasoning is your own. I don’t need to know that your current/previous employer sucks or you don’t get paid enough. How you phrase those things during a potential interview will let me know those things.

Things I need to see:

  • Any skills which you can demonstrate with experience that are relevant to the specific position or relevant to my group/company.

  • Any certifications which are relevant.

  • Any formal, post-secondary education. This can help me form other questions which I can try to learn more about you.

  • A job history. I want to know where you worked, how long, your actual title (to see if your skills align with that title or if they show some kind of progression or career/interest growth, etc.)

  • Projects or experience that you might have done outside of work to show interest or personal motivation.

Also, it depends on the type of resume you are submitting. Are you submitting a functional resume, chronological resume, or a combination of the two?

Finally, did you include a cover letter that references the specific job description and cross reference it to experience/skills on your resume?

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I think two to three pages is enough.

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I try to keep mine to one page since only the last 8-10 years of detailed experience is relevant. If you changed jobs 5+ times in the past 5 years you may need a second page and that is understandable. With each passing year however, the oldest jobs listed can be condensed smaller and smaller as the details become less relevant.

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As a hiring manager I prefer 1, but will accept 2 if the information is well formatted, concise and gives me a clearer picture of the candidate’s experience. Anything more than 2 I personally don’t bother with.

As rude as it may sound, when I have a few dozen candidates to get through, I’m not going to waste time reading a book about your life. I would expect the same from anyone looking to hire me; the greater details can be covered in the interview.

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What I do it a double sided resume, good Formatting and do not user the chronological work history format, its show 3-4 lines work history, Paragraph of skills, paragraph for projects, and 1-2 lines for certs etc. usually 1.5 pages no more than 2 at anytime, always add your own flair unless you are a recluse and completely socially inept in which case have your mom help. [run on]
As someone who has seen really good resumes and really bad. [fragment] Please for the love of all things holy… use a formal email address, you can get a good professional one for cheap or free with Gmail. [run on] If I see your email is 10infury@gmail.com or drinkswithanger@hotmail.com I can guarantee your resume is going in the trash.
Also, if you say your detail oriented (do not do this) and I find a single punctuation or spelling error, I am going to assume you are an integrity violator.

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Consider that the person reviewing resumes has a LOT to look at and reading a “wordie” resume to the last word is not likely to happen. Instead, make your resume stand out from the rest using something eye catching like Bold or colored print in the title (not throughout the resume).

Make it at a maximum 2 pages, don’t list everything you have ever touched, stick with the major “in demand” items. Try to highlight the important parts be it education, experience or other.

I prefer to include a brief and personalized cover letter that demonstrates my enthusiasm about the job prospect. Write eloquently but don’t over do it with a bunch of overstated $10 words.

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If it’s more than one page, knock 'em dead on the first so they keep reading.

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Check out my website at www.blaizenet.com to see my resume, this format within the last year or two has worked well for me. I’d also recommend building yourself a custom website for a digitial cv, if you are not comfortable with writing out all of the code, there are some nice wordpress templates you can use for digital CV’s. I just prefer to hand code all of my stuff as a coder.

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2 Pages for sure. To me two pages would seem like you actually cared about filling out the resume. Now if its 4 or 5 pages that’s a little much and I can easily see Multiple business owners skipping over the long resume and moving to the next one that’s one full page or two pages. Mainly because time efficiency…and lets be honest who likes to read a resume anyways? Not many. So Short but not too short…To short would show not much initiative and intent for a good resume.

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I try to keep mine at most 2, but a secret technique that actually caught my current boss’ attention, buy you a domain and email from GoDaddy (or whoever) and make your own resume domain name. Then include that on your resume instead of any gMail or other free email service. Extra credit if you also prop up a simple WordPress resume site and link that on your paper resume as well.

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Echoing everyone above, two pages maximum. As silly as it sounds, making it as aesthetically pleasing will earn you marks. Think about everything that goes into it. The paper you print it on, the design, (there should always be some sort of design you use, from templates to a custom one if you’re up for it.)

A resume is just as much a record of your experience as it is a first impression. Cover letters are supposed to act for that, but you want something that breaks down your experience, and what that translates to. Any certifications or specialties are a good thing to add, but as much as you don’t want a sparsely populated page, don’t over-embellish it.

Or, hey, maybe pull a Jen from IT Crowd and just make stuff up and hope you can wing it.

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It seems unlikely that you’re going to find any errors.

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I’d say no more than two.

Although when handing in a physical copy (which happens less and less these days)) I only like to hand in a single piece of paper so hello small font and ultra conciseness!

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Completely Correct but grammarly will :slight_smile:

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I have a dual rule for this coming from the federal sector and now working in the private sector.

For private sector jobs your resume should never exceed 2 pages (a single page printed front and back), there are a number of reasons for this:

  1. most of the managers I have worked with, me included, print out resumes to review them, even when submitted online. If you have two pages it is likely that the second printed page is either going to get lost, or shuffled into the stack of resumes on the desk.
  2. Most of the jobs I have been on the selection panel for have had quite a few applicants, and I have only a small amount of my day to review the resumes. It needs to stand out, and get to the point. It is great if you are like me and type out long winded, very detailed responses, but I am probably not going to read those on your resume. Instead I will skim it for keywords and phrases, read a few lines around those words/phrases, and toss it aside.
  3. The job I need filled is probably pretty specific (even general help desk positions are “specific” in reality), so I do not need to know all the things you can do that are not relevant to the posting, only if you are able to do the job that needs done. That is not to say that you should not put on your resume items that are slightly off from the posting, but keep it generally on topic. If you resume s multiple printed pages, it is very likely you are being too detailed or have become overly broad in your listing of skills.
    The other type of resume is for federal postings (usajobs.gov). Mine is about 7 pages long, and most of the people I have worked with have a federal resume of between 5 and 10 pages. This is due to the way that federal job selection works, and is pretty much the norm. For these postings you need to list everything, in specific detail, touching on the correct keywords and phrases to get through the grading system (run by Monster btw) to get forwarded to the hiring official. A two pager might do it, but it is much more likely you will make it on a 4-6 page functional resume.

On that note: I have found for all the technical jobs I have worked, a functional resume works much better. As a selection panel member, I usually cared less where you got your skills, and more about what those skills were. Generally I ignored your work history, and glanced at the education history. These again seemed to the norm with the others on my panel.

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