How Long Should A Resume Be Its Up To You
Your resume should be exactly as long as it needs to be and no longer, while also being as brief as possible without selling yourself short.
Resume length is a tricky one. If youre having trouble figuring out how long your resume should be, try focusing more on highlighting your top traits in the most reader-friendly way possible regardless of page count. If youre frustrated trying to smoosh all your experience into a single page, try a two page resume.
Most importantly, dont keep doing the same thing if its not working. Seek out new advice, try different techniques, and use all the tools at your disposal.
When To Use A Combination Resume
A combination resume may be best for you if you’re making a slight career transition or if you have a diverse employment history where relevancy to the role youre applying for may not be immediately clear. For example, you might use a combination resume if youre applying for a people manager position and you have extensive experience managing teams but youve never officially had a manager job title. This format can help showcase your leadership accomplishments and transferable leadership skills.
Related:How To Format a Fresher Resume
Professional Resume Summary Example Example For Retail
Dedicated and hard-working storekeeper with a Business Administration degree. Eager to bring my strong attention to detail and accuracy to J& R inc. Adept at communicating with vendors and suppliers, coordinating various business operations, and maintaining documents and files in order. In the past jobs brought an extra $50k of sales per quarter and increased customer satisfaction by 20%.
Don’t Miss: How To Put Wpm On Resume
Replace Vague Words With Specifics
Replace vague phrases like assisted in, helped with, andresponsible for with descriptive verbs or adjectives. Sometimes the resultingphrase will be longer, sometimes it’ll be shorter, but at least its not deadweight in your application.
Examples:
- Helped animators create a TV commercial is vague compared to Sourced high-quality videos for a TVcommercial
- Assisted resident patients in performing simple everyday tasksis better changed to Aided elderly patientsin cleaning their apartment
- Responsible for securing fundingfor a charity event is shorter if you change it to Raised $80,000 for a charity event
How To Format A Resume
The goal of formatting your resume is to create a professional-looking, easy-to-read document. Employers have only a short time to look through your resume, so your formatting decisions should make information clear and easy to find. If you are formatting an existing resume, you might need to adjust certain words or phrases to ensure it is still easy to read after youve applied formatting changes. If you are formatting a resume before you write it, be sure to pay attention to how the information looks on the page and adjust as needed.
5. Skills6. Optional
Here are the key steps for formatting a resume. Lets look at each of these components in detail. Consider how you might apply each of these when drafting or updating your resume.
Also Check: Do You Put Gpa On Resume
How Many Pages Should A Resume Be
A resume should be one page for most applicants, especially for students and anyone with fewer than 10 years of relevant work experience.
Hiring managers are busy people, and a one-page resume gives you enough space to communicate your professional experience and skills without using up too much of their time.
However, if you have more than 10 years of experience in your industry, you can make a two-page resume to elaborate on that experience and showcase all of your job skills and qualifications.
When it comes to the length of your resume, whats most important is that all the information you include is relevant and concise.
A two to three-page resume is only a problem when its full of unimportant information or old jobs that no longer represent your current skill set.
Try Different Margins Ranging From 5
Appropriate margins for a resume are .5, .75 or 1 inch. The goal is to make sure your text is evenly distributed on the page and not packed in too closely. Try adjusting your margins to the different options to see which looks best for your resume. Usually, resumes with less text will have larger 1-inch margins and resumes with more text will have smaller .75 or .5 margins.
Recommended Reading: Do You Put Gpa On Cv
Get Guidance On When You Should Send A One
The right resume length depends entirely on your background.
Resume length is among the biggest quandaries for job seekers. The presiding belief is that if its too long, you risk a hiring manager not reading the whole thing if its too short, you might look like you dont have enough experience. For all the times youve wondered, How long should a resume be? you probably figured the universe has decided on an answer by now. Alas. Theres no magic resume length that works for everyone.
The trick is figuring out the best number of pages for your situation. Follow these tips.
Rule 3 Add Keywords Relevant To Your Work Industry And Experience
When potential employers search the web for qualified candidates, they do so by typing in key skills the position requires.
If you add too many of these key terms, your resume looks cluttered, but if you leave something out, they might miss you altogether.
Find a happy keyword balance with good flow!
Note: I tend to focus on keeping experiences and skills directly relating to the role included within the resume.
Do a quick search on your favorite job search engine around the job you are targeting, and find the Must Haves or Required skills, making sure they are well established within your resume.
You May Like: How To List Own Business On Resume Sample
What Is A Career Summary On A Resume
A career summary, is located at the very top of a resume and is a short introduction with a purpose to convey a candidates set of skills. It has grown to be one of the most important parts of a resume since most hiring managers focus on this part.
It tells them how a candidate can help their company grow and thrive, what a candidate has to offer. If they are not impressed while reading the career summary, they go no further. This is a part where a candidate must persuade a hiring manager that he/she is the best among all other applicants.
How To Reduce Resume Length
If itâs still a toss-up between a single or double pager for your resume, think about some of these points that might help you keep it on one page:
- Keep your points concise. Once written, you need to edit your resume and make sure everything is as clear and direct as possible. Some tricks include focusing on the one key idea in each sentence to keep your objective, summary, experience, and other sections on point.
- Note down your achievements rather than tasks, you donât need to list what you did each day or week, just list your best and proudest accomplishments. Really get into details and back up claims with numbers or facts.
- Stick to whatâs relevant and lose optional information. Sections like your hobbies and interests might not be needed. Assess the job description for the role youâre applying for and if these sections donât directly relate then you probably donât need to include them. Also, check out if you should include your volunteer experience to your resume.
Even after all these steps, if your resume is still stubbornly sitting across two pages, then youâre doing nothing wrong by submitting it that way.
This is particularly true for scientific or academic job applications.
As long as everything youâve included is relevant, itâs going to have value to the hiring manager reading it.
Also Check: How To Make Resume On Photoshop
Resume Format : Combination Resumes
A combination resume is a blend of the chronological and functional resume types. This resume format allows you to emphasize both your work experience and relevant skills. Because your skills and employment history will consume most of your resume space, you may need to eliminate optional sections such as a summary statement, volunteer work or special interests.
A combination resume format usually includes the following information in this order:
- Contact information
- Summary of most relevant skills
- Work experience
-
Education
The combination resume is a more flexible format, so you should list either your skills or your work experience first depending on which you consider more important for the role. For example, if you have many unique skills that are especially valuable to the industry in which youre applying to work, you might consider listing them above your work experience. It can also be helpful to look for clues in the job posting to understand what is most important for the employer in an ideal candidate.
Remove Irrelevant Tasks Or Accomplishments
Every job comes with a list of tasks and responsibilities,not all are worth listing in your resume. Delete everyday tasks you cant tieto a quantifiable accomplishment or noticeable growth in your field.
Work done with your companys CEO, high-ranking officers, ora well-known expert in your industry is an accomplishment. Dont delete those. Youcan write about this experience in two ways:
- how working with them helped yougrow in your field faster
- how they value your ideas andtrained you to become a better leader
Also Check: Languages On Cv
What To Include In A Mid
Focus on Your Accomplishments: A strong mid-career resume will lead with accomplishments: rather than “Presented on topic XYZ,” a mid-career resume may say “Led training efforts on topic XYZ, ensuring a successful switch to the new operating system.” See how to make your resume stand out from the crowd.
Include Your Most Relevant Skills: Whether through networking, careful research, or LinkedIn connections, mid-career applicants often skip the job application step that involves having a resume scanned by a machine for keywords. When you’re applying for jobs directly that is, sending your resume to someone’s email use a version of your resume that lists only significant or surprising skills.
Match Your Resume to the Job: Quantity doesn’t always win. A strong mid-career resume will be calibrated to match the job you want instead of including every career twist and turn, and listing every skill and task completed, focus on work experience and skills that relate to the job you want.
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.
You May Like: How To List Multiple Jobs At Same Company On Resume
Why Your Resume Should Be Two Pages
Your resume will most likely need two pages to show your career progression. If you have more than 10 years of experience, youâll also want to include a professional summary and possibly a career highlights section. These are both excellent opportunities to fit in more keywords.
For highly skilled applicants, a two-page resume will also fit all your relevant experience, education, certifications, and additional training.
Make Your Font Size 10 To 12 Points
Another factor in making your words clear and readable is setting an appropriate font size. Generally, you should stay between 10 and 12 points. If you have a shorter resume and are trying to fill space, select a 12-point font. Anything larger might appear unprofessional. If you have a lot of information on your resume, start with a 10-point font and increase it if you have space.
If your resume is still more than one page with a 10-point font, avoid reducing your font further. Instead, see if there is an opportunity to make your ideas more concise. You can do this by removing any irrelevant or extraneous information, combining ideas or making your ideas briefer with shorter sentences and fewer filler words.
For example, heres a sentence in a resume that can be shortened:
Performed inventory audits every month and discovered issues with over-ordering executed an organization solution across all teams which resulted in a 10% increase in revenue over the next two quarters.
Make your ideas concise and remove filler words to include only the core value of your statement:
Performed regular inventory audits, identifying and solving over-ordering issues to achieve 10% revenue increase.
Here are a few other ways you can use to make a shorter resume:
Related:Q& A: How Long Should a Resume Be?
Recommended Reading: How To Build A Acting Resume With No Experience
Key Tips For A Professional Summary
Dont make a misstep! Here are some key tips for what to do and what to avoid with your professional summary statement.
What Should You Include?
- Keywords from the job listing:When possible, try to use specific language from the job listing. This demonstrates that youve carefully reviewed the listing and that youve got the skills and experience the potential employer is looking for.
- Milestones or key achievements:If you won a prestigious award that establishes you in the field, be sure to mention it.
- Impressive numbers:If you have more than 10 years of experience in the field, dont be shy about mentioning it. But focus on impressive numbers if your experience amounts to more like 6 months, you might not want to shout it out.
What Should You Avoid?
- Unnecessary information:Remember, the professional summary statement isnt intended to stand alone its a precursor to the resume. As Patt says, It needs to work in concert with all the other elements of the resume. This isnt the place to mention things like employment gaps or talk about your future goals.
- Being flashy:The professional summary statement is a sales tool, but it should be a soft sell. According to Patt, it should not call attention to itself avoid anything that is too attention-grabbing. Let your achievements and experience do the talking avoid brash or provocative language.
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.
Don’t Miss: How To List Relevant Coursework On Resume
Use A Hybrid Resume Format
A hybrid resume lets you focus on your skills, rather than going into a long chronology of your work history that can be difficult for applicant tracking systems and hiring managers to read. A hybrid resume begins with a section summarizing your qualifications, followed by professional accomplishments, key skills, and work history. Using measurable data and highlighting information and skills relevant to the current job makes your resume compelling and concise.
Find A Template With Small Margins
“Microsoft Word and similar apps default to one inch margins, but you can shrink those to 0.25 inches before running into issues with printing. Shrinking font size can free up much-needed space, just be careful though because you don’t want to have issues with readability,” says Austin Belcak, Founder of Cultivated Culture, where he helps people land their dream jobs despite having no network or connections.
The template below, for instance, has a smaller margin compared to other resume templates.
Don’t Miss: How Many References Should You Include In Your Resume
When Should Your Resume Be Three Pages
Your resume should rarely be three pages or more. Most of the information for a three-page resume is better suited for a LinkedIn profile or a comprehensive CV.
âThough we generally advise against a resume length beyond two pages, sometimes itâs necessary,â says Jennifer. âSome professions and industries have a different set of standards when it comes to resumes and therefore require more information.â
Exceptions To The Resume
While I strongly encourage you to limit yourself to a two-page resume, there will be instances where this is near impossible. This often happens to professionals who have never-ending lists of technical skills and proficiencies, a large number of consulting gigs to explain, or a series of published works to include. If you fall into one of these categories, you may need to use the first part of a third page. However, try to avoid this if possible since there is still a limit to how many pages a resume should be.
There are three additional scenarios when your resume length is likely to exceed two standard 8.5″ x 11″ pages:
-
If you are looking for a job in academia or the sciences, your academic resume should be more than two pages long. In fact, your resume could be up to 15 pages!
-
If you’re applying for a job with the U.S. federal government, your federal resume might be 37 pages long in order to fit all the required information.
-
While an international CV the type of document used to apply for positions in most countries outside of the U.S. should also be 12 pages long, the size of the paper is different. International CVs should be 12 pages of A4 paper, while resumes should be 12 pages of standard letter paper.
You May Like: How To Create A Teenage Resume