How long should a resume be?
4 min read
Resume length is argued about far more than it deserves. The useful version of the rule is short: length should be a consequence of how much relevant evidence you have, not a target you pad or amputate your history to hit.
The practical rule
One page if you have up to roughly ten years of relevant experience. Two pages beyond that, or if you work in a field where evidence accumulates - research, medicine, senior engineering, consulting.
Academic CVs are a separate category with different expectations. They are expected to grow with publications, funding and teaching, and are not judged by the same brevity standard.
Density beats page count
A recruiter's first pass over a resume is short - a scan for whether you are plausibly a fit. Two well-organised pages of achievements will always beat one page crammed to the margins in eight-point type with no whitespace.
If you are fighting for room, the answer is almost never to shrink the type. Cut content instead, or use a denser template that reduces spacing while keeping the font readable.
What to cut first
Work down this list before you consider trimming recent achievements.
- Duties that any holder of the title would have. Keep what you specifically changed or delivered.
- Roles older than about fifteen years - reduce them to a single line each, or a short 'Earlier career' block.
- Skills sections listing things now assumed, like email or basic word processing.
- Objective statements that describe what you want rather than what you offer.
- References available on request - everyone knows, and it is a wasted line.
- Full postal address. City and country is enough, and safer.
What is worth the space
Anything quantified. Numbers are the fastest way to make a claim credible: scale, money, time saved, percentage change, team size. A bullet with a number in it earns its line far more reliably than one without.
Also keep a short summary at the top. Two or three lines naming your role, your years of experience and your strongest domain gives the reader a frame for everything that follows - and it is the part most likely to actually be read.
One resume per job
The strongest argument for keeping a resume tight is that you should be adjusting it per application anyway. When you tailor, length takes care of itself: the experience relevant to this posting expands, and the rest contracts.
That is easier if you keep one master document with everything, then cut down per application rather than rewriting from scratch each time.