How long should my resume be?

There's a common belief that a resume should be two pages - no less and certainly no more.  But is it true?  The answer is..........well, maybe. 

There are some situations where a resume should never exceed the magic maximum of two pages.  If a company or organization has a rule that a resume submitted for a job posting should be no more than two pages, then keep it to two.  If you exceed two pages in that case, your resume could either be rejected outright or only the first two pages read.  For example, the local school board in this town has a two page limit.  For new graduates of the Faculty of Education, who have worked so hard to gather relevant volunteer and work history, it might be a challenge to keep it short.  But keep it short you must if you want it to be read.

However, most of the time, you don't have those kind of official rigid rules.  But that doesn't mean you can go wild, include everything you've ever done, all your hobbies and favorite movies, and a page listing all your courses and your marks. 

When it comes to length of your resume, here's the short answer.  Your resume should be as long as it needs to be to sell you and no longer.  In other words, keep it concise and focused.  Either leave out old or irrelevant jobs and courses or use creative layout techniques to minimize the space they take up.   For example, if you have recent jobs that are related to your employment objective, along with some that are part-time or perhaps interim jobs that are not related, try this.  Have one section titled 'Relevant Experience' or something similar and list the important jobs there, along with responsibilities and achievements if you are using a chronological or combination resume.  Then have another section called something like 'Previous Employment' where you just list the irrelevant jobs with no duties.  That will be the section you delete as soon as you can, when you are firmly planted in your chosen career field.

Don't make the mistake of making narrow margins or squishing everything together to make your resume appear shorter.  You want it to have whitespace and be easy to scan and read.  An employer spends only a few seconds scanning a resume when they first look at it. Of course, if you pass that first scan and warrant a second look, he'll spend a bit more time, but first you have to grab his attention in that first few seconds. 

So here are my top three tips for making sure your resume is just the right length:

take out old or irrelevant information;

focus on the attention grabbing details like achievements and don't just copy your job description;

order it by importance and make sure your key skills are right up front where they will be read.

If you're hitting a roadblock in your job search, read my free article to figure out whether your resume is the problem.  It's available here.