Poll of the Day > Man, some professionals really hate seeing one page resumes.

(+) Yeah! (+)

I was reviewing one and thought it looked good, but coworkers had to say it looked like a high schooler full of themselves with no accomplishments. They tend to prefer the thick resumes full of junk.

Peoples opinions on resumes are both so strong and so subjective. I remember I was being encouraged by one guy to keep my resume, but reformat it to make it take three pages instead of one! Then one guy who encouraged ten or more pages with added content, and then who thought one should be one page max. Super strong opinions though saying mine was embarrassing.

What can this guy even do, what if I missed this sentence I wouldnt know he could do this, he needs a paragraph here so people dont miss it

Professionals and academics are the worst to deal with sometimes.

And don't forget cover letters, explaining your resume to people via a pre-resume.

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Resumes are supposed to be 2 pages max, and a cover letter should be one.

You're working for weirdos.

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Rotpar posted...

And don't forget cover letters, explaining your resume to people via a pre-resume.

cover letters make a lot of sense if youre applying somewhere that might be reviewing dozens of applicants or more at a time

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ReturnOfFa posted...

Resumes are supposed to be 2 pages max, and a cover letter should be one.

You're working for weirdos.

2-page resumes are becoming more normalized now, given how squishy one page is, but that's definitely the most you should ever consider for the vast majority of jobs. Telling your accomplishments in novel form is what a CV is for, not the resume.

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I heard resumes should be one page per 10 years experience

Why would you want a long resume? Don't they have work to do?

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Anywhere I worked, if it was longer than a couple of pages, it got chucked. You need to be able to succinctly communicate your abilities through accomplishment statements, not paragraphs.

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ReturnOfFa posted...

Resumes are supposed to be 2 pages max, and a cover letter should be one.

You're working for weirdos.

This, more or less. Shorter resumes are an industry-wide preference because people have to go through a ton of resumes. And there's a lot you can fit on a page or two. When you get to three pages, you're kinda stretching it and I've seen hiring managers not even bothering to look at 4-page resumes, or only reading the first page.

Considering that hiring managers see so many applications, people want to frontload and condense as much as possible since otherwise HR or a hiring manager might not see something relevant before moving onto the next resume.

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I used to be a manager and hired ground level employees and that seems crazy to me. Fuck a thick resume. A one page resume I can read in less than a minute is the preference. I really only need to know a few things prior to meeting them. The interview is where the bulk of my decision will hinge.

I'm a big believer that it shouldn't even be more than one page, unless you're in academia or somewhere that research projects and papers are important to list. I guess that may be a CV anyway, though I often see the terms used interchangeably. If you're just going for like a regular ass office job there's no point. If you're going for a management position they don't need to know about your entry level beginnings out of college, it's not meant to be a complete work history

Your resume should pretty much never be longer than two pages (and even then, I would recommend trimming it to one if you can without making it visually crowded). I'm an engineer, I've been on hiring teams before, and longer resumes almost never get looked at. When we might have to sift through hundreds of resumes for a position, we're looking for anything we can to narrow the field - "This person's resume is taking too much of my time," is just as valid a criterion as any at the initial stage to dumpster it.

If you need more than two pages to tell me why I should hire you, you've already probably lost me.

At the resume review stage, we're not looking for your life's story, we're looking for a quick summary of your skills and experience. Anything else we want to know initially will be in the application. If there is something in your resume that piques our interest or that we want to know more about, we'll ask you about it in the interview.

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What I write in my resume: Engaged in an active field study regarding the impact of a solo initiative into foreign economies, the impact of said initiative upon the local populace (including economic impact of both an increase in low-cost wares and consumables in a static market) as well as developed an economic strategy to maximize profits through diplomatic interactions and investments in local markets.

What I did: Stole a bunch of sweetrolls and other garbage and sold it to the shopkeeper in Whiterun using my maxed speech skill to earn tons of coin.

What my resume says I did: Engaged in a high-investment/high-reward imitative involving training underperforming workers to maximize their capabilities and perform at a level that far exceeded the average output of fellow co-workers.

What I did: Trained a Magikarp and got it to evolve into a Gyarados.

What my resume says I did: Headed a group intent on outreach to the underprivileged groups with the intent of organizing large-scale events meant to provide said underprivileged groups with opportunities not normally afforded to them as well as procure additional resources for my organization and scout said groups for promising individuals that could contribute to the organization in the future.

What I did: Ran raidfinder/Duty Finder in WoW/FFXIV

What my Resume says I did: Engaged in a hypercompetitive field utilizing a varied methods of approach in order to accomplish specialized delivery goals while working with a group of like-minded individuals to break into a previously-inaccessible field.

What I did: Played Overwatch.

What my resume says I did: Engaged in a low-cost initiative to form community outreach programs designed around the goal of fostering both community outreach programs, improving relationships with the local community as a result, and providing improved-quality goods for use by all parties involved.

What I did: Held a BBQ party and cooked some food.

What my resume says I did: Worked in a position focused on improving the interactions between customer and company in regards to the completion of transactions and customer satisfaction with limited funding and a focus on providing service at inopportune work hours with the goal of ensuring customer satisfaction despite limited employee resources and scheduling.

What I did: Worked the nightshift at a job paying less than minimum wage and where I was the only person with a sleep schedule that allowed me to be up that late.

Don't ya LOVE resumes? Taking complete garbage that anyone could do and reworking it to sound like you're the single best employee in existence and they should TOTALLY hire you to work at Denny's because of your low-cost overhead replacement with a limited budget that resulted in no additional costs incurred or excess waste that resulted in a massive improvement in all employee morale (figure that one out. It isn't hard).

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Nobody reads resumes anyway

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Zeus posted...

This, more or less. Shorter resumes are an industry-wide preference because people have to go through a ton of resumes. And there's a lot you can fit on a page or two. When you get to three pages, you're kinda stretching it and I've seen hiring managers not even bothering to look at 4-page resumes, or only reading the first page.

Considering that hiring managers see so many applications, people want to frontload and condense as much as possible since otherwise HR or a hiring manager might not see something relevant before moving onto the next resume.

If Zeus and I are on the same page, you better know it's a sure thing!

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I agree with Zeus as well. Short resume's are both better and result in much less padding and a better assessment of a persons actual skills.

I think the 'long = better' dates back to, like, the 60's or 70's when people wanted hyper-skilled employees and the assumption was that anyone worth looking at would have a lengthy resume overlooking that this isn't true for lower-level jobs.

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ReturnOfFa posted...

Resumes are supposed to be 2 pages max, and a cover letter should be one.

You're working for weirdos.

Agreed, but last time I turned in a cover letter and a one page resume my manager told me I should pad it out more. Makes absolutely no sense to waste people's time and fill a resume with garbage that doesn't mean anything.

GunslingerGunsl posted...

Resumes are supposed to be 2 pages max, and a cover letter should be one.

You're working for weirdos.

Yep

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arv thought 1 page resumes were ideal cause they employers have so many resumes to look at and if they see something too long they wont look at it. So cover letter 1 or maybe 2(depending on the career)papers for past experiences

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They will ask for more long drawn out questions during the interview. So you did this in 2019 can you explain more about it

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If your cover letter sucks they wont read the rest

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It's extremely important now to have a resume that is machine readable as well as human readable. I used to have a resume that looked really great, with columns and bullet points and stuff, but when fed into a computer it came out as gibberish.

If you're applying online, it's a safe bet that a computer is reading your resume first and tossing anything that doesn't match what it's looking for. The computer is probably also making a summary which is what the hiring manager is looking through. Your actual resume might not be seen until after it's made it through all these hurtles.

https://www.themuse.com/advice/beat-the-robots-how-to-get-your-resume-past-the-system-into-human-hands

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I wouldnt put anything on a resume that doesnt pertain to the job Im applying for. This would most likely mean that it would appear to some that I am a high-schooler who is full of himself.

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captpackrat posted...

It's extremely important now to have a resume that is machine readable as well as human readable. I used to have a resume that looked really great, with columns and bullet points and stuff, but when fed into a computer it came out as gibberish.

If you're applying online, it's a safe bet that a computer is reading your resume first and tossing anything that doesn't match what it's looking for. The computer is probably also making a summary which is what the hiring manager is looking through. Your actual resume might not be seen until after it's made it through all these hurtles.

https://www.themuse.com/advice/beat-the-robots-how-to-get-your-resume-past-the-system-into-human-hands

tbh, any time you're trying to go through the front gate, it's an uphill battle. However, that tends to be where almost everybody focuses their efforts instead of one things like networking or more targeted introductions. It may only take two seconds to send a resume (or half an hour to use company's dedicated system), but it takes about the same amount of time for either an automated system or a HR rep to screen somebody out.

And yeah, one undetected or missing keyword (or seemingly missing keyword, if they're looking for a skill described one way and somebody describes it another way) can result in a candidate being screened out by an automated sytem even if they're above and beyond qualified for the role.

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I thought resume building was all about making sure you have keywords for the bots to not auto reject you, and then the rest was just filler

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I'm so lucky jobs don't get enough resumes in my field to actually use automated screening.

blu posted...

I'm so lucky jobs don't get enough resumes in my field to actually use automated screening.

Is automated screening the third-party company hired by an employer to hire people who are typically either over-qualified or who have credentials but no experience?

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blu posted...

I'm so lucky jobs don't get enough resumes in my field to actually use automated screening.

That's not necessarily true. Even if you work in a field without many applications, if the organization you work for is large enough it likely still uses automated screening or similar practices. This can be true of things like hospitals where they may have highly specific roles, but they also hire for a lot of more common positions.

zebatov posted...

Is automated screening the third-party company hired by an employer to hire people who are typically either over-qualified or who have credentials but no experience?

I don't understand the question as phrased, but my takeaway that is you're confused about the nature of automated systems. While most automated screening systems are implemented by outside vendors, usually it's the company's own HR department who takes things from there. As I understand it, HR will put in a set of parameters which in turn screens out candidates who are missing those parameters (most notably certain keywords). While the systems are more set up to weed out under-qualified candidates, the system would obviously be capable of removing "over-qualified" candidates depending on how it was set up.

However, if a company is using a job board, usually the screening mechanisms are built right into the site itself.

Technically speaking, any IT person can create an automated screening system for their company because the mechanics often aren't that complicated. All you'd need to do is to create a form in some cases, which even a complete amateur could do in something like Visual Basic.

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1 page resume makes zero sense unless you've only ever worked at 1-2 companies.

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Judgmenl posted...

1 page resume makes zero sense unless you've only ever worked at 1-2 companies.

Your post makes zero sense. First, even if you only ever worked at 1-2 companies, that could comprise decades of experience in multiple positions (and thus give you more to write than if you worked at 10 companies in smaller roles). However, even then you'd want to try to keep it manageable. Second, and far more importantly, you don't need to put down every job you worked going all the way back to when you flipped hamburgers in high school. Usually people just list the last few companies they worked at, especially since it lessens the likelihood of encountering age discrimination.


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I'm shocked at the number of people endorsing multi-page resumes, in all the advice I've heard/read over the years, keeping it to one page was one of the most universal. Am I so out of touch? No, it's the PotDers who are wrong.

I've worked two major jobs in my life and most of the time they don't even talk about the older one, or like half the stuff on my resume when I interview. Don't see why you'd need to list so many unless you're a serial short-term contractor or something

Anyone who is advocating for multi-page resumes is out of touch and never been part of the other end of the hiring process.

JigsawTDC posted...

Anyone who is advocating for multi-page resumes is out of touch and never been part of the other end of the hiring process.

????
I have interviewed lots of people in my time. The length of the resume does not weigh into the decision. In fact the more I can talk about to the person I'm interviewing the better. How out of touch are people on here?

And Zeus is pedantically right. My experiences at my current company could probably be put on an entire page. I have worked on 5-6 different projects, compared to other companies which are basically 1 project, that I'd scrape the barrel trying to explain in a couple of sentences. Then again, one of the things I've done is designed my own mesh networking / network overlay software, which I don't think many people can say that they've done.

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