Amanda Clark — March 10, 2017 Follow @GrammarChicInc
One of the most common questions received by our resume writing team is about length: How many pages should a good resume be, exactly? Our answer: It just depends.
For a seasoned executive with decades of experience, a two- or even three-page resume can be totally appropriate, and necessary for summarizing all pertinent career information. For someone who’s fresh out of college and looking for entry-level work, though, a one-page resume is usually sufficient.
For some jobseekers, condensing a resume to fit a single page is challenging. It’s especially frustrating when your resume takes up just a few lines of text on the second page, but you can’t figure out what to cut in order to shrink it down to one.
We can provide a few tips for making your resume nice and compact.
Don’t Sacrifice Readability
First, a quick word about what not to do. Don’t choose a super-small font—that is, don’t pick anything smaller than a 12. And don’t shrink the margins. These little cheats are transparent to recruiters, but more than that, they make the document harder to read—which means your one-page resume may simply get tossed into the garbage.
Make Your Writing Succinct
A better way to shorten your resume is to make your language tighter, more to the point. Eliminate first-person pronouns. Get rid of needless adverbs and other superfluous descriptors. And don’t hesitate to use any acronyms that are truly standard and well-known—for example, if you report to the Chief Executive Officer, it’s fine to just say CEO.
Eliminate Anything That’s Redundant or Unnecessary
This includes:
- High school job experience.
- Interests and hobbies.
- Objectives.
- “References available upon request.”
Try Putting All Your Contact Info on Just One Line
Using vertical lines to separate things, you can probably condense your address, phone number, and email address into one line. It’s worth a shot, anyway.
Get Help from the Resume Experts
It might also be wise to get a second pair of eyes, and to hear from an outside expert what can go and what needs to stay on your resume.
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