How Long Should a Resume Be? Here’s What the Research Says! was originally published on The Job Insiders.
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:
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“Do what you love!” vs. “Find a job with growth opportunities!”
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“You have to write a cover letter!” vs. “No one reads cover letters!”
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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:
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They gave a group of recruiters two versions of the same resume – 1-page vs. 2-page
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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:
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Entry-Level
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Mid-Career
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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:
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Have more information to work with or less?
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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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