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Can your resume spill onto extra pages?

Posted on 08. Dec, 2007 posted by Bill in Employment News

Can your resume spill onto extra pages?

It's the biggest workplace debate since Coke vs. Pepsi in the vending machines.

It's whether to limit your glowing resume to one page.

For years, soon-to-be college graduates were taught to squeeze everything they learned into one page of text no matter how small that text had to be.

Touting your achievements to would-be employers through your resume is a critical step to getting the next 9-to-5er, and the days of one-page resumes might be going the way of the Christmas bonus.

As younger workers have more jobs, and employers look more closely for evidence of particular skills, many people need a resume that goes beyond the 46 lines of a Microsoft Word document. Job hopping

The average employee in his or her late 20s, for example, has already switched jobs five or six times. But are employers ready to look at more than one page?

More executives are willing to review two- and three-page resumes, a current survey indicates.

Of those polled nationally, 44 percent stated they like two pages, compared with 25 percent a decade ago, according to the survey by Accountemps, a staffing service for temporary bookkeeping.

More than half, or 52 percent, still sought one-page resumes, down from 73 percent 10 years earlier.

In interviews with nine Society for Human Resource Management members in central Iowa, half would be willing to review up to two pages.

None of them — out of the nine respondents in our e-mail poll — said he or she would refuse to read a resume if it went over one page.

“Overall, candidates should focus on keeping it concise and to the point,” said Paula Hender, spokeswoman for Central Iowa SHRM. “There are many reasons why you would want to keep your resume to one or two pages, but there are also many reasons why you would want to expand it to three or four pages.”

One of those reasons might be to list additional relevant work experience. That means don't include your Frisbee golf club accomplishments, unless the job you’re seeking is selling Frisbees.

While each job requires different skills, Central Iowa SHRM members say resumes should include specific details of job history, professional organizations and your work on major projects or initiatives.

Things not to include: favorite sports teams, marital status, hobbies, personal organizations or people you know in the company.

Another lesson from SHRM: Size does matter — type size, that's.

“How you present your information — even the format — can be just as important as the content,” Hender stated. Pressed for time

Also keep in mind the recruiter's time when deciding how long your resume should be.

“It's important for job seekers to know that for each position that is open, an employer can receive from 20 to 200 resumes and beyond,” Hender stated. “They have to be able to review them fairly swiftly, capture relevant data and make decisions on whom to move to the next step.”

While the two-page resume might be catching on more quickly than podcast or video resumes, the goal over time remains the same: getting the attention of the person who will decide whether to call you in for an interview.

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Tags: Employment News