There’s a lot of misconceptions out there in the world today around the job search and job search best practices. But one that I keep hearing over and over again in the Discovery Calls I have with prospective clients is around resume length. Usually something to the tune of:

“But I thought my resume had to be one page?”

So today I want to spend some time talking about resumes, specifically myths around the length of your resume and the idea that your professional resume has to be one page.

Does My Resume Need to Be One Page?

The short answer: absolutely not. UNLESS you are a recent college graduate or if you have five years or less of professional experience. If you are a recent college grad or if you have less than five years of experience, a one page resume is perfect for you. However, if you have more than five years of professional experience, it would be weird it your resume WASN’T longer than one page!

And here’s why: If you have anything north of five years of professional experience – 10, 15, 20 years of experience – if your resume is one page long, I’m seeing that as a recruiter and going, “What’s going on here?” If you have 5-20 years of professional experience and your resume fits on one page, that actually may work as a disadvantage against you, making you look way less experience and accomplished than you actually are.

How Long Should My Resume Be?

If you are a recent college grad or if you have less than five years of experience, a one page resume is perfect for you.

If you are a professional with 5-20 years of experience, your resume should be 1.5-2 pages long.

The only exceptions to this rule:

• If you are an Actor, your resume should be no longer than one page. Period.
• If you are in the Educational field and using a “CV,” there’s no limit to number of pages on your resume.
• If you are in the Military or Government space, you must follow a very specific resume format and length/number of pages is not a consideration. (I have seen 5+ page government resumes!)

Other than that, the industry standard is pretty much going to be two pages. So you’re always, always, always going to be fine with a two-page resume; no employer is going to bat an eye at a two-page resume.

Why Should My Resume Be Two Pages?

In today’s day and age, we all know what a big role things like ATS (applicant tracking systems) play in the job search. According to Jobscan, “Most companies today, including over 97% of Fortune 500 companies, rely on an applicant tracking system, or ATS, to help them hire new employees.”

So what that means is – more often than not, when you’re submitting your resume on online platforms to apply for jobs, it’s being screened by robots and not actually real people. And what those robots are looking for are specific keywords, specific parameters, specific qualifications that have been set by the recruiter and the HR team.

So if you have just one page of content, you’re doing yourself a disservice in terms of the depth of keywords and those important phrases that are going to actually help you in that digital screening process. If you give yourself a nice healthy two pages, you’re really going to be able to include the content that’s going to make a difference in terms of getting past that first line of defense with the applicant tracking systems.

So just in terms of numbers alone: with a two-page resume versus a one-page resume, two pages is going to give you much more content real estate and a better opportunity to be seen as qualified in the eyes of these robots.

How to Optimize Your Resume to Get Past ATS

To optimize your resume for specific roles, I like to recommend doing what I call “the five minute check” – when you’re applying for a new job, take five minutes to check your resume against the job description. Review the language that’s being used (specifically in the “Responsibilities/Duties” section) and take five minutes to update your resume to incorporate that language (as long as it is truthful to your experience.)

If your resume is set up with Identifiers, a Summary, and Areas of Expertise (which is my approach to resume work!), you can update those sections to incorporate important keywords and phrases very easily.

So now that you have some of this information about resume dos and don’ts when it comes to length and content, if you’re feeling like your resume is too short or maybe you’re not maximizing the available real estate on your resume, reach out to me! I’m always happy to take a look at resumes and provide a free audit and just some feedback to help you improve your resume. Or you can send me your resume directly at poisedandprofessionalcoach@gmail.com

Prefer watching videos to reading blog posts? Check out a video of me answering the question “How Long Should My Resume Be?” right here!