How Many Pages Should a Resume Be?
One of the worst parts of searching for a job is that everyone has a different opinion on everything:
“Do what you love!” vs. “Find a job with growth opportunities!”
“You have to write a cover letter!” vs. “No one reads cover letters!”
And of course, “Your resume needs to be one page!” vs. “Who cares!!!”
What’s a job-seeker to do? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
While some of these questions may be subjective (i.e., passion vs. practicality), as a former MBA career coach at the University of Michigan, I’m happy to say that the resume question has a 100% objective answer.
Here’s what the research says:
Should a Resume Be One Page?
To answer this question, researchers started by identifying the primary purpose of a resume: To help recruiters quickly decide whether a given applicant deserves an interview.
With this goal in mind, they set-up a clever experiment:
They gave a group of recruiters two versions of the same resume - 1-page vs. 2-page
They then asked recruiters to quickly decide whether a given version was worthy of an interview - just like they do in real life
And you know what they discovered: Recruiters actually prefer 2-page resumes!
Can a Resume Be 2 Pages?
While that initial finding was amazing (especially since many of the recruiters thought 1-page resumes would do better before the experiment began), what’s really mind-blowing is that the researchers even broke the results down by career stage:
Entry-Level
Mid-Career
Senior
And so even though you might assume that 2-page resumes were only preferred for more senior candidates, the findings held up across all career stages.
In other words: Recruiters always preferred 2-page resumes, even at earlier career stages.
How Long Should My Resume Be?
What’s behind these amazing findings, you ask?
Well, put yourself in a recruiter’s shoes. If you’re looking for specific evidence that a given applicant could be a rockstar candidate, would you rather:
Have more information to work with or less?
Have some nice white space to let the words breathe or have them crammed into tiny font and margins?
As you can see, two-page resumes just make recruiters’ jobs easier. And anything that makes recruiters’ jobs easier makes it easier for you to get the job!
So bottom-line: Don’t get caught up in all the different, unsubstantiated opinions out there. Instead, stick with what the research shows - and go out there and land a job you love!
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