You have a 6-page resume with every single detail about what you have done in your college and professional life, but you still don’t receive any interview calls. How is it possible that when your resume with all possible keywords is still not showing up in the recruiter searches or by the Applicant Tracking Systems? What are you missing out here?
Remember it’s either an ATS bot or a very junior recruiter who is doing the first shortlist. They have a set of mandatory requirements that need to be ticked off before moving your resume to the next stage. If your resume is 6 pages long a recruiter will most definitely be tempted to evade it, simply because they would rather see a shorter resume from where they can pick up the mandatory requirements easily and move on. On the other hand, an ATS bot will be able to quickly scan a 6-page resume and shortlist you for the next step….yay!. But again every resume that gets shortlisted by the bot is re-reviewed by a human and there you will once again lose the battle because a human eye would prefer an easy to navigate resume to read rather than a 6 pager.
So, what should the ideal resume length be?
While there is no fool proof method to determine the length, but experts advise that:
Stick to a one – pager if you are a fresher, or you have not more than 5 years of experience in max two companies, or if you are switching career paths and if your experience is not relevant to where you are applying to now.
For professionals with more experience and upto 10 years, a two-pager should suffice, where you want to highlight your acquired skills, highlight your achievements, balance out your experience and culture fit attributes
For those with 10 years plus three pages is the farthest you can go as a last option, with neatly labeled and demarked sections. For the labeling of the sections use simple words rather than using fancy jargon or fluff.
For senior technical roles and CXO level, it’s advised to split your resume so that you can fit your profile highlights into two pages but if you need to add more information have addendum pages that elaborate on your unique projects, achievements, references awards or skills that you were not able to fit into the two pages.
If you wish to appeal to an international recruiter most definitely stick to a one-pager and for seniors do not cross beyond two pages.
In my next post I will take you through on how to shorten your resume and how to demark sections.