The executive looks like the type of prosperous, self-confident professional one would expect: Well-dressed in a dark blue pin-stripe suit, impeccably coiffed and appropriately exuding a sense of purpose and resolve. He proffers his resume and tells me with great pride that he had to pay some purported “expert” only $500 for the advice necessary to assemble it. I look down and realize that $500 went down the tube. It’s one page long. More than two decades of solid achievement molded, crammed, shoved and extruded onto a single page. I know now that it will be necessary to once again unearth “the speech.”
The speech goes something like this: Somehow, sometime, no doubt shortly after World War II, somebody floated the idea that in order to compose an effective resume, job seekers had to limit themselves to a one-page document or nobody would read it. This is total insanity, but it somehow took root in the American psyche and has become so ingrained that even today, some 60 years later, executives still labor under the misconception that a scanty resume is what every hiring manager wants.
The real truth is that nobody, save perhaps the recent college graduate, can or should effectively represent his or her skills and accomplishments on the front of an 8 1/2- by 11-inch piece of paper. In 25 years of reviewing resumes, I’ve never declined to interview someone because I had to read two, three or more pages on a resume. I’ve decided not to interview someone whose resume was on glitter paper, included a picture of his dog, implied that they were related to Bill Gates, or claimed they were charter members of Mensa — but never have I refused to consider a candidate because I had to take an extra 10 seconds to read a few pages of text.
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The Right Size Resume (PDF)
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