Striking a Balance: Resume Page Count

Somewhere down the line, the advice was given to keep resumes short and sweet- as in, “keep it to one page”. I can remember spending hours revising my resume, fiddling with margins, googling synonyms to make everything fit perfectly so. This was long before I entered the field of recruiting, and now, I know better.

Imagine this: you’re given the task of telling your entire life story for the chance to win $1,000,000. The winner will be chosen by how compelling, detailed, and exciting their story is.

The catch? It has to be one page.

Sure, maybe you could do it. But would you be leaving some really important pieces out? Would you edit out decades of life experience, milestone events, people who’ve impacted you? And at the end of it all, would it still feel like an accurate reflection of your life? You see where I’m going with this.

The same rings true for resumes. On one hand, hiring managers and HR teams don’t want to read 10 pages. They simply haven’t got the time. On the other, one page for 20 years of IT experience? Hard to paint a picture as to why they should hire you.

On a weekly basis, we connect with candidates who’ve been told “keep it to one page”. We’d rather you have too much information, and pare it down to help you stand out, then ask you to expand. To state the obvious: if this is your first gig in the professional world, that’s a different story. But if you’re a Senior Cloud Architect with a one-page resume, we’ve got some work to do!

FINDING THE right balance

Balance is important: we don’t want you to add bullet points just for the sake of making it longer. And please, don’t copy and paste generic bullets from one work experience to the next! So what length should your resume be? Here at Custom Business Solutions, we tend to see 3-5 pages as the sweet spot. That’s not a hard and fast rule, but it allows our candidates to describe the following:

1)      Their role at the company

2)      What tools and technologies they worked with

3)      HOW they used these tools/technologies in projects (this is so important!)*

4)      Some of their accomplishments during their tenure/notable key performance indicators

*A note: it’s important that you’re able to speak powerfully to the tools and technologies you work with. If you’ve just been exposed to a particular tool, but have no hands-on experience, it might be best to leave it off your resume. Feel free to discuss your exposure/working knowledge during an interview, but don’t misrepresent your experience.

A TALE OF TWO RESUMES

For every resume we receive with bullet points like this:

• Developed applications based on client feedback

• Worked with both onshore and offshore resources

• Used a variety of tools to accomplish tasks in timely fashion

We have resumes from candidates with bullet points like this:

• Responsible for the design, coding, and implementation of applications built using C# .NET and React

• Collaborated with Architects, QAs and Product Owners to ensure timely testing and implementation

• Successfully migrated web APIs to Azure, resulting in reduced maintenance costs of $100k per year

Guess which candidate is more likely to land an interview, if all other factors are the same between the two applicants?

THE TAKEAWAY

Recruiters, HR teams, and hiring managers aren’t mind-readers. We’re much better at determining whether this role is the best fit for you, and we can’t do that without knowing what you’re truly capable of. Paint the picture, throw the 1-page limit to the wind, and let’s show clients you’ve got what it takes to be successful in this role… based on your amazing, detailed resume.