How Long Should a Resume Be?

If you're updating your credentials for a job search, you may be wondering: how long should a resume be? Should a resume be one page? You've probably heard the rule that it should be just one page and that you shouldn't go beyond that. But is that really true? Job postings frequently ask for one's entire job history – what if that doesn't fit on one page? In other cases, it takes more space than that just to describe the nature of your job titles. Should resumes be one page then? Let's investigate.

The Resume and Its Purpose

The purpose of a resume is to provide an at-a-glance summary of your relevant experience to potential employers. In that quick glance, it should show that you have the experience and qualities they're looking for, get them excited, and leave them wanting more. This is the expectation that your audience will bring to the format – anything you call a resume will be put to that task.

A Movie Trailer for Your Services

Think of it as a movie trailer for you as a professional. The film industry standard for a movie trailer is one-and-half to two-and-a-half minutes long. It shows the audience what the movie is about and gives them a sample of its tone and a few highlights. But it doesn't attempt to tell the whole story – in fact, doing so would be tiresome. Ask yourself: How long could a movie trailer get before I'd feel it wasn't a trailer anymore? Would I want that?

As it turns out, your sense of what's appropriate for a movie trailer is almost a perfect analog for the place of a resume in the job search process.

Assuming standard formatting, the average 1-page resume will usually weigh in at between 475-600 words. Meanwhile, the average reading speed is about 200 to 300 words per minute. So that makes the time it takes to fully read a one-page resume fall between – you guessed it – about one-and-half to two-and-half minutes or the length of a movie trailer.

Taken together, these concepts bear out in the real world. As reported by The Ladders, research by TalentWorks indicated that the 475-600 word (one page) resume length is best. Once this limit is exceeded, chances of being hired fell by a stomach-dropping 43%.

“At a Glance” Means What it Says

These times, of course, assume those resumes are read in full, which doesn't always happen. Before a recruiter decides whether or not to read one of the resumes they've received, first they give it a quick visual scan. Indeed reports that on average, employers look at resumes for six to seven seconds, making the “quick glance” referred to earlier as part of the definition of the resume format both metaphorical and literal. Making your resume longer than a single-sided piece of paper makes this basically impossible.

All this indicates that exceeding the length of the resume format isn't exceeding expectations. It's robbing yourself of a resume capable of performing the function that recruiters will attempt to use it for. Should a resume be one page? Absolutely.

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