Why Should You Choose A Resume Length
Resume length should be enough to convey the best qualities that qualify you for the role. The length of your resume depends on your experience, skills and the job requirements. You can use a multiple-page resume if you need more space to list achievements and skills that might increase your chances of getting the position.
You should always try to keep your resume concise to make it easier for the hiring manager to see your main selling points. Based on your experience, work history and job requirements, your resumes length can be one page, two pages or more.
Here are some tips to help you determine the best resume length for your current career status:
How Many Pages Should A Cv Be
You’ve probably been told not to exceed two pages. However, there is no set limit. As a guideline: a one page CV is normally enough for a graduate or someone with a limited career history. A two-three page CV is about average length.
Obviously, the length of your CV depends upon your level and your career history – an executive CV will no doubt be much longer than one for a recent graduate, or someone with no experience.
Tips For Writing A Federal Resume
Creating a federal resume that brings your qualifications to life and shows that you are a perfect fit for the job can be a challenge. Be sure to demonstrate how your skills, experience, training and education match the employers needs. Avoid misspelled words and bad grammar. Following are a few ways to make this easier.
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Whats The Ideal Length For A College Application Resume
Most people applying for college need a one-page resume. Be sure to include specific details so you can highlight your best and most relevant achievements. Use more pages if you need to list extracurricular activities, academic awards, leadership positions and other things that can boost your chances of getting admission.
How To Shorten My Resume
You might be thinking, how could I fit everything into a single page? One section of a resume might need more space than another, but then it restricts me from fitting everything into one
For example, if youre using a functional resume and have different skills such as:
- Computer skills
- Soft skills
- Hard skills
Even if youre using a different resume layout , theres always that thought of wanting to include more things. Its always good to mention additional experience but it can sometimes have the opposite effect.
To learn how to shorten your resume to two pages or one page, use the following key tips:
If the answer is no, you can remove it.
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How To Decide The Length Of Your Resume
Because your resume is the primary document you use to market yourself during a job search, it is important to make sure it includes as much relevant information about your skills, experiences and accomplishments as possible. But it is also important to make sure you know how long your resume should be. Knowing the appropriate length for your resume can help you determine which information you should and should not include in your resume.
In this definitive guide to resume length, we discuss everything you need to know to help you decide how many pages your resume should be.
Why Your Resume Should Be One Page
Your resume can safely stick to one page if that is all you need to market yourself. One page resumes can be scanned over quickly by the human eye, so a one-page resume could appeal to in-person scenarios like job fairs and networking events.
If you have a two-page resume with no work experience, it probably contains filler words and information that isnât relevant to your current job application. Cut your resume down to one page by tailoring your resume to your relevant experience.
If youâre making a career change, your past experience is unlikely to be fully relevant to the new job target. Try to lead with your transferable skills and abilities if youâre in this position, rather than experience. A functional resume format may be better for you.
The same goes for recent grads. Odds are that you donât have two pages of relevant experience. However, some graduates have multiple internships, volunteer work, on-campus activities, or publications that belong on a resume. If you just graduated, read more about how to search for a job as a recent graduate.
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Sample One Page Resume
This is an example of a one page resume. or see below for more examples.
Career Summary
Seasoned and meticulous Financial Analyst offering 10 years expertise providing decision support to executives of global manufacturing companies. Highly skilled in clear-cut and concise storytelling through financials. Core Competencies:
- Financial Analysis and Reporting
- Quantitative Methods and Forecast Modeling
- Revenue and Expense Variance Analysis
- Data Mining and Visualization
ABC MANUFACTURING CORPORATION, Oklahoma City, OKFinancial Analyst, 02/2013-PresentPartner across all functional business units to deliver quantitative analyses and forecasts of expenditures, sales revenues, and capital improvements.
- Implemented and trained executives in use of new management reporting system that increased timeliness and accuracy of financial reporting
- Pinpointed and reconciled discrepancies in business unit financial reports, averting risk exposure by creating stringent new due diligence processes.
XYZ GROUP, Norman, OK, 06/2008-02/2013
Skillfully researched and prepared business cases, performed cost benefit analyses, and structured quarterly forecasts to optimize business planning processes.
- Played instrumental role in creating a business case and performing due diligence key to a $4.5M merger and acquisition.
- Formulated recommendations for long-term planning that ultimately produced a 17% increase in business growth.
Education and Credentials
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.
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Include A Career Note In A Senior
If you only held one or two positions before the 15-year cut-off, you can provide a short career note that mentions the roles and titles you held.
This format gives you some flexibility, as you may decide to summarize a few very similar roles into a short blurb to keep your resume length under two pages. For instance, you may say that your earlier experience includes … executive assistant work for companies including Company A, Company B, and Company C. If you worked with some name-drop worthy clients, you have the ability to work those details into a blurb like this as well. However, the rule of thumb is to keep this note short and sweet, so eliminate unnecessary details such as employment dates.
Click on the following link to see the entire two-page sample resume for a senior professional.
First Show Relevant Experience And Skills
Keep the content of your resume relevant to the job description. Read through the job requirements to understand the best skills, experiences and work history that will boost your chances of getting the role. Before submitting your resume, revise it to remove any element that does not support your application.
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The More Concise The Better
Communicating your most important and relevant information as briefly as possible is crucial. Recruiters and employers only have a few moments to decide whether or not your resume is a good fit for the role. In keeping with this practice, be critical of every point you include on your resume. Here are a few ways to make your resume more concise:
- Instead of including every job duty for each position youve held at every company youve been at, consider including two to three bullet points of quantified achievements.
- Avoid using filler words, such as that,the,a,an or like.
- Consider removing experiences or information that may not be relevant to the position youre applying for.
-
Study the job description to get a better idea of what the employer may be looking for in your resume and what potential keywords to include.
When You Have Extensive Career Accomplishments Certifications Or Technical Skills
If you are in certain industries, such as IT, engineering, academia, or scientific research, employers will want to review lists of your professional certifications, tech skills, key projects, and publications. These industries still privilege professional credentials as much as they do qualifications, and so a second or third page is necessary in order to provide a comprehensive account of ones training background and work history.
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So Is It Okay To Have A Three
It depends but generally no, a resume should almost never be more than two pages long.
Why?
A hiring manager only skims a resume for a few seconds before deciding to either look into it in more detail or send it to the rejection pile. You want to give them a resume thatâs clean, concise, and relevant. There is just no reason to take more than two pages to do that.
Hiring managers often have hundreds of applicants per job posting, and may be hiring for multiple positions at a time. A long resume might annoy a hiring manager, since the information is likely not all relevant.
Generally, your goal is to effectively communicate that you’re right for the job in as little space as possible.
Tips For Writing A Two
- Place your most important qualifications on the first page: Both applicant tracking systems and human hiring managers want to see a candidates most relevant skills given pride of place at the very beginning of the resume. The best way to do this is to use a resume summary to provide a brief synopsis of the expertise and professional skills that make you a strong candidate for the job youre applying for.
- Incorporate keyword phrases: Use keywords in your resume summary, and then rinse and repeat throughout your Professional Experience section. Applicant tracking systems calculate the number of years youve practiced a particular skill, so industry-specific keywords need to be repeated in each job description.
- Showcase quantifiable achievements: One of the primary advantages of using a two-page resume is that it gives you space to highlight your career accomplishments. Do this in the Professional Experience section by describing your work responsibilities in a brief paragraph, and then providing examples of important contributions in a three- or four-item bulleted list.
- Length of page two: Although you dont have to fill the entire second page of your resume, you should have enough text to fill at least a third of the page . If your text is running short, try to add more relevant information, keywords, and bulleted accomplishments . Play with font sizes and margins. If these strategies dont work, however, you should probably stick with a one-page resume.
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Combine Multiple Related Bullet Points Into One Bullet Point
If you have multiple lines on the same subject within your job experience, you can often combine the statements into one.
Example: Optimize your space by combining functions
-
Ensured our marketing had a positive ROI.
-
Utilized marketing tools to ensure maximum ROI.
-
Managed the marketing team to ensure smooth and efficient projects were deployed.
-
Implemented and managed a marketing campaign with extensive A/B testing to achieve a 190% ROI.
The three bullets can easily be grouped together to form a statement thatâs sure to impress an employer. If you have paragraphs, you should turn those into bullet points as well.
Consider Your Career Level And Experience
Next, consider what the career level of the position you are applying for is and how much relevant work experience you have. If the position is entry-level, you will probably only need a one-page resume. If the position is a midlevel, senior level or executive position, you may need a multi-page resume. Likewise, if you have an extensive amount of relevant work experience and accomplishments spanning more than ten years, you may also need a multi-page resume.
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Why You Should Consider Creating A Two
If you are a mid-level professional, there are several good reasons for creating a two-page resume. Perhaps the most important of these is that many companies now use an automated applicant tracking system to carry out the initial screening of the resumes they receive .
Such systems are programmed to privilege resumes that use and repeat specific keyword phrasesthe bots assess both the placement and the frequency of industry-specific keywords in a resume. They also look for the length of experience one has in using particular job skills.
Expanding your resume to two pages will enable you to repeat these essential keywords throughout your professional experience section.
Although this may seem awkward and redundant stylistically, it is one of the best ways to ensure that your resume is one of the scanned resumes that actually make it to the stage where it will be considered by the human eye of a hiring manager.
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.
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Does A Resume Have To Be One Page
It used to be expected and even required, but times have changed.
As we discussed above, it is considerably more important to balance relevant content with being concise. However, one page can be too short to strike that balance.
You are trying to be concise and enticing. Generally, that means that you should avoid going over 2 pages.
However, there is more to it than length. If you have tiny margins and size 9 font throughout, including headings, youll keep the page number down, but your resume will be overwhelming to the reader.
Although it doesn’t need to be one page, keep your resume concise, informative, and attractive.
In most cases, the answer is yes. A hiring manager is not naturally inclined to sort a 3-page resume of every experience you’ve had into the “yes” pile.
However, there are instances in which 3 pages may be required.
When Is It Acceptable
Several instances were discussed above where a resume can be longer than 2 pages.
A federal resume is often 4-6 pages long.
If the role you are interested in requires a CV , it will likely be over 2 pages long because of the additional information you will need to include.
As a freelancer or executive, sometimes 2 pages is not quite enough space, and going to a third page is necessary. Just keep the information applicable to the role you are applying to.
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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.
Remove A References Section
References are assumed and donât deserve to be mentioned on your resume . Donât list them out, and donât include the line âreferences available upon request.â
Instead, make a separate reference document to provide when asked. A hiring manager doesnât need this early on in the application process. Your resumeâs goal is to get you a phone call, and then to schedule an interview. Keep it focused on you and the value you would bring to this company.
Pro tip: bring a printed copy to your interview, and keep an email draft with names, contact information, current job titles, and your relationship to the person.
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