Dawn D. Boyer, Ph.D.

CEO, D. Boyer Consulting |
Author, Human Resource Professionals in Government Contracting Guidebook

The 20th Century advice that a resume should only be one or two pages is no longer valid

It’s great if you can get all your valuable information across in one page or two pages, but that would ‘cheat’ you – the job seeker – if you compiled a tiny fonts and tiny margins document to cram 10-15 years of experience into two pages, when you can make it much easier to read in three pages with larger margins and white space.

Here’s the deal, since the Fed government has mandated that all applicants for all jobs applied for must be documented, companies have moved to Automatic Tracking Systems (ATS) and thus forces job applicants to upload resumes, enter data, and track any EEO data offered by the job seeker as part of the reporting and AAP statistics.

Also, recruiters have moved to query for the applicant pool for specific keywords and phrases that will match the open job description. Thus, they don’t care if the resume is 4, 5, or 6 pages long if the keywords are in it, and they can see enough information on the first page (top) to incite continued reading.

If they find what they are looking for in the first few pages, great – give the applicant a call or push the resume to a hiring manager for interviews.

Recruiters who toss a resume because it’s over two pages are also cheating themselves and their employer – that unique job skills or training on the third page of an applicant resume may be exactly what they are needing.

Excerpt from the Article posted on: https://upjourney.com/how-long-should-your-resume-be