Job Seekers are always commenting to me that they heard that a recruiter told them or a Human Resource person said that their resume shouldn't be more than 2 pages.

My advice is Don't Listen to Them.

Your resume needs to be as long as it needs to be in order to accurately and effectively describe who you are, what you do and the type (s) of positions you are seeking.

I have over 35 years of experience and my resume is 5 pages long. I can't possibly reduce it to 2 pages. If I am a company, recruiter or hiring manager and reading your resume, there are two things that will immediately cause me to disregard it.

I'm Confused - that from reading your resume, it is not blatantly obvious who you are, what you have done and what you are looking to do.
I Have Too Many Questions.

If any or both of these are the reaction I get after reading your resume, I'm not going to call you and ask. I'm going to immediately disregard your resume and application.

With my resume being 5 pages, if I tried, I could probably reduce it to 4, but not to 3 pages. So much information would be left out which would then cause the reader to have too many questions, thus causing my application to come to a screeching halt.

My philosophy is it’s better to have more and maybe the reader wont read it all, then to have less and have them wonder if this is all there is. Also, you don’t want your resume to be like everyone else. It needs to be different and stand out.

Resumes are a combination of so many things - roles & responsibilities, accomplishments & achievements, quantifiable and measurable metrics, education, certification, training, technology, etc. It is not just facts and figures, but a mini biography, that tells a story - YOUR STORY. Then this entire story needs to be condensed into a 2 paragraph professional summary and then a 50-60 character headline.

Your resume also needs to serve multiple audiences. It first needs to pass the initial screening of the HR Generalist whose sole responsibility is to compare your resume against the job description and basically check the boxes. Ken has this, this and this... (they will probably not read the entire resume) but they will most definitely read the Professional Summary.

If the company is paying a salary of $50,000 or $100,000 of $150,000, they are going to take the time to read the entire resume regardless of whether is is 3, 4 or 5 pages. It only takes another 5 minutes.

The best comment I get from clients about their resume is that no one has any questions. That's the point. The resume needs to speak for you when you cant speak for it

The type of work many of you do is very detailed. If someone is interested, they will read the entire document. Maybe, only some organizations will ask for 2 pages (not many), so I feel it is not in your best interest in reducing the number of pages because too much information will be left out.

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