How long should your resume be?
In high school, when guidance counselors told you about searching for a job, there was the one page resume rule. “Employers will toss out any resume longer than one page,” my guidance counselor used to say wagging his head at me, an overly active 17 year old who had started her own business at 10 and had done extensive volunteer work even as a child. So of course I downsized my 1 1/2 page resume to the prescribed one page resume.
What about now? Does that rule still exist? If your resume is over one page (gasp!) will you also be sent to the naughty seat and not be hired? The answer is an emphatic No! The rule of thumb is that your resume should be as long as necessary to make an employer feel enticed to call you for an interview. If your resume is 2 pages and you can justify those two pages as actually being full of accomplishments and work-related tasks that make you look like a strong candidate – beautiful! Of course if you are an educator, three to four page resumes can be justified IF you have not only taught, but done speaking arrangements, conferences, wrote articles, books, press releases, or done anything to signify you as an expert in the educational field. The same holds true for law and medical professionals.
So before scaling down your accomplishments to have a nice, trustworthy one-page resume, ensure that you have written enough to make an employer trust you as a reliable employee.
