Job Hunter's Tip of the Week #15 -
The perfect resume: One page or not one page? That is the question!

A frequent question that is asked when putting together a resume is about the length of the document. How long should the resume be? I have found a fair amount of material on this subject, and the answers seem to vary a lot. For the most part, many of the experts believe that your resume should be no longer than one page. One page is easy for the employer to handle, you don’t have to worry about a page getting lost if the paper clip comes loose, and it also forces you to be brief and precise. If you are a new graduate, or new to the workforce with little experience, than one page is all you need.
With that being said, if you’ve been working for a number of years and have a good deal of experience in different areas, you do not need to restrict your resume to one page. It is more important to let the potential employer know about your many skills and abilities, then to try to cram it all onto one page. Be sure to continue to be precise and use sentences that are exact in describing your skills. In another word, don’t get too wordy. A good rule of thumb is one page is enough, and three is too many!
No matter what the length of your resume is, make sure it grabs attention on the first page, preferably in the first 5 lines. Remember the “Summary of Qualifications” we talked about previously? Use those statements to make your resume stand out. An employer can look at anywhere from 10 to 50 resumes for one position, make sure they find your document to be the most interesting!

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