Senior Level And Science Candidates
Executives or senior-level managers often have a long list of accomplishments and experiences that they have to include. The same is true for people in the sciences or academia who want to include their licenses, patents, or publications. These job seekers can write a resume that is three pages long or even longer.
Is It Ok To Have A Three
Generally speaking, no. The exception would be if you fell into one of the above examples given by the FlexJobs career coaches. You should only use a three-page resume when everything on your resume is relevant, which often doesnt happen until late in your career. And, even when thats the case, you need to write your resume carefully to make sure you arent repeating yourself. No recruiter wants to read about your clear and concise written communication skills under every section of your resume.
Even in the case of a long work history, ask yourself if every job is still relevant to your resume. For example, the fact that you were a summer camp counselor during college might be an interesting fact, but its probably not doing much for your resume when youve been working in corporate finance for the last 9 years.
When every job is relevant or important to your resume, you may not need to include every job duty or experience. Consider highlighting only the top three or four major achievements from each job. Use the STAR method to describe how you solved problems and how these actions benefit your employer. This will help keep your experiences small, meaningful, and compelling.
Rule 1 Leave Out Irrelevant Work Experience
If the information doesn’t serve a purpose, leave it out!
The last thing you need is a hiring manager weeding through the clutter to find the “good stuff.”
Dont hold back on sharing your accomplishments, but leaving a little something to chat about during the interview is a good idea.
Note: How long should your resume go back? Look at the job description. If it says “2-4 years of experience required,” don’t drag in unrelated gigs you worked 15 years ago.
If youve been in the workforce for a while, leave off any high school and college work experiences, unless they relate directly to the job you are applying for. Keep your resume filled with relevant experience!
The facts: There is an 88% rejection rate when you include a photo on your resume.
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Top 5 Tips When Writing A Resume Summary
Start with your qualifications. Stress the most relevant qualifications to the job youâre targeting. Look at the job description and edit your existing summary to each position so you can appear as qualified as possible.
Focus on your benefit. Remember that your summary should show the employer what you can bring to the table. Word your summary in a way that says this is who I am and this is what I can do for your company. Donât tell the employer what your resume objective is, tell them how you benefit them and their objective.
Keep length in mind. Keep your resume summary at four to six sentences. Many job seekers write only a sentence or two or go on for too long. Find a good balance and stress the important points–no fluff!
Always quantify when you can. You should include quantifiable results and achievements in the summary. Numbers have been proven to psychologically capture attention over plain words. It also allows you to portray yourself as an âachieverâ rather than just a âdoer.â For example: âDecreased overhead expenses by 40%â sounds a lot better than just âdecreased expensesâ.
Use the active voice. Many job seekers resort to overused language like âresponsible forâ or âin charge of.â These are weak terms. Instead, your summary should read in an active voice where possible. This conveys that you are a self-starter and that you can connect the âwhyâ with the âwhatâ in your previous positions
Start With A Salutation
Begin your letter with the appropriate salutation, like ‘Dear Hiring Manager.’ If you know the name of the hiring manager or the person who will read your letter, address it to them, such as ‘Dear Ms. Lipman.’
It’s usually best if you can include a specific name in your cover letter. You can look at the job description or the company’s website to see who the hiring manager. If you can’t find the information online, you can call the company to ask for the information.
Here are some acceptable salutations you can use if you can’t find a name or if you need to address the letter to multiple people:
- Dear Hiring Team
- Dear Hiring Manager
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How Long Should Your Resume Summary Be
When writing any resume summary, it can be tempting to simply fill it with every major point you want the reviewer to know. That would be a mistake, though–for several reasons. First, no recruiter or hiring manager wants to read a professional summary that just rehashes every point made in the body of the resume. That sort of summary will simply be ignored. That would defeat the purpose anyway.
The reality is that your summary should be a âhookâ that captures recruitersâ attention and gives them a reason to read the rest of the resume. To do that, you should write a resume summary statement that contains between four and six lines of text that highlight key points that will invite further reading.
A summary for someone with little to no experience or making a career change will of course be shorter. You can check out our post on writing a resume summary for an entry-level position for tips on how to keep a resume summary relevant.
Create An Earlier Work History Section For A Senior
If you have 20+ years of experience or changed jobs frequently at the beginning of your career, you may need more than a one-liner to cover the work experience. An alternative is to add an Earlier Career History section at the bottom of your professional experience that lists the job title, company name, and location of each role.
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Information Technology Specialist Summary
Accomplished technologist with broad skill set and 10+ year record championing and implementing leading-edge solutions that facilitate rapid business growth. Effective communicator with a talent for communicating complex and highly technical concepts across audiences. Proven ability to rapidly assimilate new technologies, optimize solutions, and resolve complex issues. Relentless focus on customer satisfaction.
Spare One Page Resume Template
Just want a bare-bones one page resume template that feels like a breath of fresh air? The Emma single-page resume template on Etsy conveys professionalism and efficiency. Its eye-friendly, but dodges flashy extras to get the job done.
Expert Hint: If you build your 1-page resume in Word, save it as a PDF. Theyre machine readable in 2019 and dont lose their formatting once you send them.
Double your impact with a matching resume and cover letter combo. Use our cover letter builder and make your application documents pop out.
Want to try a different look? Theres 18 more. A single click will give your document a total makeover. Pick a cover letter template here.
Expert Hint: When should you use a resume, and when is it better to use a curriculum vitae? It depends. CV and resume actually have a different meaning across languages. Read about the difference between a resume and a CV.
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Online Profile Or Resume Link
An online profile or resume is a complementary addition to a resume that allows the employer to access your digital work history and professional profile. Some employers look for this element because it can give them a more in-depth look at your online work presence and your professional connections. There are many online resume websites and professional social media channels that employers may review. An online profile also provides additional content such as your professional headshot, links to work samples and blog posts.
Read more:How To Build an Online Resume Website
Case Study: Daniels Two Page Customer Support Resume
Daniel had been involved in remote work for over two years.
Two years of experience doesnt sound like a lot. But the impact hes had during that time was huge, which left him with a lot to say.
The nature of his work requires more detail on who he is and his ability to fit company culture despite the distance. It was also necessary to explain the reasons why hes gravitated towards remote working too.
His less than 10 years of experience would typically lead us to a one-page resume. However, in this case, two pages were needed.
The hiring manager wants to see the value you can provide for the company. Even if you dont have as much experience as Gal does and youre someone like Daniel, you want to talk about the results you were responsible for.
When the employer sees what youre capable of, its more likely theyll hire you for the job posting since they understand how valuable you are.
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Contributions To Resume Length
There arent many hard and fast answers when it comes to how long a resume should be. Its dependent on the specifics of your personal experiences. Some factors that determine your resume length include:
- How long youve been working
- How long youve been working in your target field
- How much youve moved up within your field
- How many times youve changed jobs
- Whether or not youve completed higher education
- Whether your higher education aligns with your target field
- The depth of your skill set relevant to the job
- Whether your field is highly technical and/or project-based
These and other aspects of your experience might compound into a resume draft that is four or five or ten pages long. Theres no harm in a long first draft, but just as the Changing Times article suggests, the next step is to cut ruthlessly.
Can You Use A Two
To summarize the above â yes, you can.
You just need to make sure that your most critical pieces of information are highlighted on the first page.
If you’re an entry-level job seeker, than you won’t need an additional page.
Continue reading our tips and suggestions below to see how you can condense your resume space to stand out on the first page.
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Be Clear And To The Point
When trying to reduce your resume, be sure to review each line for repetitive statements.
For example, you do not need to point out you did the same thing at every job you have had.
Also, remove statements that do not directly refer to a skill you have or an accomplishment youâve completed.
Tip: Remember, you can always expand on certain items in the interview. No need to list every detail on your resume.
Another trick involves how many bullet points you assign to each position.
Review the skills they are looking for and tailor them to the job description.
What past jobs demonstrate those skills the most?
Those are the positions that should be 4-5 bullet points because itâs most relevant.
The first couple of positions on your resume can be limited to 2-3 bullet points because they are not as relevant or because you are mentioning similar things with your other positions.
How Long Do Employers Look At Resumes
On average, employers look at resumes for six to seven seconds. However, the amount of time that an employer spends looking at a resume varies from company to company. Some employers may thoroughly scan a resume, while others may scan it for only a few seconds. The number of applicants for a particular position can also play a factor in this assessment.
For instance, if there are only a few applicants, the employer may look at all of the resumes thoroughly. If there are many applicants, however, then the employer may hire a recruiter or hiring manager to quickly review the resumes or use an automatic resume scanning system. Although there’s no definitive time frame for how long an employer looks at a resume, you can try to focus on improving the elements of your resume that are most typically reviewed.
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The Myth Of The One Page Resume
The hard rule youre most likely to encounter is that your resume should be exactly one page long, no exceptions. Many still stand by this advice.
One page made a lot more sense when it was more common to mail, fax, or physically hand your resume to a stranger, but technology has mitigated many of the associated concerns. For example, the second page of an email attachment wont get lost in the shuffle, or a page break wont make much of a different within an applicant tracking system .
Here are some of the other reasons this advice persists beyond the fear of lost pages and pokey staples.
Resume guidelines must progress with your career
Most of us first learned how to write a resume when we were in high school or college. At that time in our lives, many of us were taught to never ever exceed a single page.
This made sense at the time. Most of us didnt have the experience to warrant two pages. The problem is that as weve developed our careers, weve carried that advice with us. The guidelines need to change once youve accomplished a few things as a professional.
The six second resume challenge
Perhaps the most cited piece of information in support of the one page resume is a 2012 study by the Ladders in which recruiters were found to spend an average of six seconds reviewing each resume before deciding how to proceed.
- The Ladders: Heat map showing that recruiters had no trouble reaching the end of long resume.
Constraints lead to a better resume
How Many Words Should A Cover Letter Be
Most cover letters now are sent via email, so keep your cover letter word count between 200-350 words.
This isnt exactly hard science but it’s how many words there are on average in all the four paragraphs of a well-written cover letter.
And one more thing:
If you want to write your cover letter in the body of an email, rather than send your cover letter as a PDF attachment just make sure its even more succinct.
Remember: hiring managers read emails in a hurry.
Charlize Bence
PSI’d love to tell you how my team managed to improve UX/UI scores by up to 20% by means of increasing user feedback collection.
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Rule 2 Proper Spacing Is Important
Never clutter pages in an attempt to shorten your resume.
Review and narrow down any unnecessary sections to generate more space. If more room is needed, simply extend to an additional page by adding relevant skills or experiences.
Note: While double spacing is a bit much and single spacing begins to look fairly cluttered, Ive found 1.5 spacing to work best.
You can alter the fonts and tweak the format, but dont go overboard. It still has to catch the hiring managers eye.
Case Study: Mias Three Page Research Assistant Resume
Mia has been working in immunology for many years.
From her undergraduate work to her current postdoctoral work Her drive to make a difference in the world has produced publications, presentations, and awards.
In her pursuit of postdoctoral research, demonstrating her expertise in the field is an absolute must. There are also expectations of an academic resume to put simply, having the correct style and streamlining your design.
To produce a resume to satisfy these conditions as well as discussing her previous work, a three-page resume was needed.
So far with all the case studies, have you noticed any similarities?
Firstly, theyre modern resumes which stand out. Above all, its the resume design and the way it highlights key information such as your certifications and different types of skills by using appropriate visual aspects. This is what makes them so compelling for the hiring manager.
Chances are, the recruiters at your company arent used to seeing a modern resume like this. So, making an impression and getting your foot in the door isnt difficult.
If youre unsure what to write and trying to cope with writers block, Enhancv makes the entire resume building process easier for you.
When youre using any of these proven examples, you have a resume in front of you thats gotten someone hired in the most competitive spaces. More importantly, they could just be like you.
These resume templates are free.
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You Havent Moved Around Much
You may have several years of experience, but perhaps its with the same one or two companies, or in a role without much change. If your experience has been fairly steady, then the reality is that you may not have enough to fill in more than a page, even if youve been working for several years. In this instance, the single-page resume allows you to call out key accomplishments and achievements without getting too wordy.
The Multiple Resume Approach
Now, while it would be odd to build a one-page resume into a full-blown two-pager, its not unusual to craft multiple resumes, each of slightly different length. Resumes are increasingly customized by position. Indeed, the most eager job candidates are quick to tailor their education and work history to specific openings.
Good resumes demonstrate good judgment. What better shows your good judgment than a resume that highlights the precise skills and experience that relate to that job?
Let your properly sized resume land an interview. Then you can tell the recruiter more.
Los Angeles-based James Peter Rubin has written about employment and management issues for many publications, including The Wall Street Journal and The Economist.
Related Links:
- Find your states unemployment office
- Qualifying for unemployment
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