Whether you’re actively looking for and applying to new positions or just in the early stages of beginning to put together a new resume, there’s one thing everyone knows… Your resume or CV must be two pages, right? Well, if you believe everything you see out there on the interwebs, you might think so. However, the two-page resume is simply a myth. A myth that’s worth busting (and I plan to do just that, today.) Let’s dive in…
The Myth: Your resume must be exactly two pages
In my experience as a recruiter, I have seen people try, with varying degrees of success, to cram all sorts of information onto just two pages. I’ve seen people with forty (or more) years of experience reduce their career down to two pages. How do you successfully narrow that many years and that much experience down to just two pages? The reality – you don’t.
But, they know their resume has to be two pages, they read it on the internet! So they stretch the margins and shrink the fonts (just like a freshman in college.) Anything to make it all fit on just two pages!
The problem? This makes it more difficult for your audience to read and grasp a complete picture of your unique work experience.
As a recruiter, I know that this myth is fundamentally untrue. Yet, I see it perpetuated everywhere.
Myth Busted!
There is a simple thought experiment that I’d like to walk you through in order to verify that this myth is, in fact, false – so that we can bust it once and for all.
If you have ever, in the course of your career, been involved in a hiring process, think about how many times you’ve…
Step 1: Come across someone’s resume.
Step 2: Realized that they are the absolute perfect person for the position.
Step 3: But then realized their resume was three and a half pages.
Step 4: So you tossed their resume aside.
Step 5: And went with a less qualified candidate whose resume was exactly two pages.
Can I guess how many times you’ve had that exact experience? It hasn’t ever happened, right? The likelihood of that scenario ever taking place is so very slim.
So let me ask you this: why, oh why, do you think that your resume needs to be exactly two pages?
The Caveat
Yes, I am saying that your resume can be longer than two pages. However, this is not an open invitation to write a ten-page resume. Please do not submit your personal memoir in lieu of a resume. There is such a thing as too much.
This is a reminder to create a resume that uses the exact appropriate amount of space to effectively and authentically capture your value and fit for the position at hand.
Making special efforts to stretch margins and doing typewriter gymnastics with the fonts to get your resume or CV to fit into an arbitrary box, won’t benefit you or your chances at landing that position you’re applying for. Trust me.
But where did the two-page resume myth even come from? (and will it disappear anytime soon?)
A two-page resume is not an inherently bad idea. Certainly, people need to be more efficient and many resumes do go on for far too long.
With that being said, it’s clear that this myth is often perpetuated by the resume writing industry. If you do the math, it is roughly twice as much work to write a four-page resume as it is to write a two-page resume. The economics of the resume writing industry can sometimes be quite transactional and that causes many in the industry to keep driving forward the myth that a resume needs to be just two pages.
Unfortunately, it’s likely that this myth will continue to be perpetuated and it will also continue not to be true.