Whats the Right Length for Your Resume

Whats the Right Length for Your ResumeWhats the Right Length for Your ResumeConventional wisdom and many resume experts recommend limiting the length of your resume to a single page. But a new studyfrom ResumeGo revealed that hiring professionals are mora than twice as likely to prefer two-page resumes to one-pagers, and are more willing to spend about twice the time reviewing these longer submissions. This is true not only for managerial positions, but for entry-level jobs as well.Whether youre a current job seeker or just want to ensure that your resume is properly updated for future opportunities, check out some highlights of the research below based on a conversation withPeter Yang, CEO of ResumeGo, which can help guide job applicants in determining what they should cover in their two-page resume.Longer isbetter.Career experts have long debated whether longer or shorter resumes tend to perform better. Many thought leaders argue that theres no need for a resume to be more than a s ingle page in length for the majority of job seekers. Yet the new study found the opposite that recruiters and hiring managers were not only willing to spend the extra time needed to read through two-page resumes, but they actually felt better about receiving more information from candidates as opposed to a condensed CliffNotes version in a concise one-pager.Yang points out that most of the arguments that career experts make for one-page resumes have historically been based on their personal experience and/or anecdotal evidence, rather than statistical data analysis. Because of this shortcoming in the research, ResumeGo sought to get to the bottom of the debate by studying the behavior of nearly 500 recruiters and hiring managers, ultimately discovering that job seekers who submit two-page resumes may have a significant advantage over those with shorter resumes. These findings are important because they have a massive impact on how job seekers should approach the task of writing the ir resumes, summarized Yang.Dont cut it- keep it.Following the traditional rule to streamline resumes so that they fit on one page, job seekers have often had to make some tough choices. If you only have space for a few paragraphs of total copy and your work experiences take up the full space on your resume, what happens to other potentially important sections like an objective statement, relevant volunteer experiences, professional memberships, and awards, for example?Fortunately, with hiring teams acknowledged preference for longer resumes, you have more options now to add important details that go beyond just a list of your professional experience. And by including additional relevant points, you have more chance of standing out to an employer, potentially gaining a leg up on the competition.Job seekers whose resumes naturally exceed one page should no longer feel the need to cut out potentially critical sections or bullet points just for the sake of reducing their resume length, says Yang. In fact, with the extra real estate, job seekers can now afford to include things on their resume such as an objective statement, a longer list of academic coursework, a broader platzdeckchen of skills, and older work experiences- things that might not have been worth mentioning if their resume were confined to a single page.Maximize your competitive advantage.Being able to include more is a particularly important advantage for online applications. Since many companies now use applicant tracking systems (ATS) to filter for candidates whose experiences and credentials best match the job in question, a two-page resume gives job seekers more space to include all the necessary hard skills, coursework, and keywords that are most critical to their particular industry and to the position for which they are applying. Yang notes that online job seekers using two-page resumes when applying via an ATS minimize the likelihood that their resume will be screened out by applicant track ing systems and maximize the chance that their resume will be read by an actual hiring manager.While the study found that two-page resumes outperform one-pagers even for entry-level workers, Yang doesnt suggest that entry-level job seekers go so far as to force themselves to create a two-page resume based on limited work experience. If your resume is naturally just a single page, thats perfectly fine. Doing things like adding in irrelevant fluff, increasing the font size, oradjusting the page margins just for the sake of making your resume longer will not help your cause, and will likely reflect on you poorly.Instead, Yang emphasizes that job seekers should absorb the following key take away from the study if you have more to say in your resume than will easily fit on one page, theres no need to make the extra effort to cut it down to one page- and, in fact, you shouldnt.Want to chat with an expert about your resume?SIGN UP FOR CAREER COACHING