Why You Shouldn’t Cram Everything Into One Page.

If you think that a one page resume is important, you’re wrong. Dead wrong. The people who will look at your resume do not have a special pile for one page resumes. In fact, having limited information about your professional experience here can hurt you significantly. There was a time when this rule was useful, but that time has long since past.

Recently I concluded a successful job hunt, and after speaking to many recruiters, hiring managers and other folks that see hundreds of resumes per day I learned the most important factors in what the best candidates resume’s have in common. I put all those qualities into my resume, and here’s what got me interviews and my current job.

If you like what you see and what you read, here’s a link to my actual resume Word document that you can use as a template: Stefan Persson – Resume (2014-08-12). I hope its useful.

FOCUS ON THESE THINGS INSTEAD

READABILITY (#1)

Hands down, this is the most important factor in determining whether or not your resume will even be looked at.

PUT IMPORTANT STUFF FIRST AND IN BOLD – Put what matters up front, and make it stand out. The person reading your resume can jump around the bold parts and make a fast decision about you. This saves them time and quite literally gets their attention.

– Put what matters up front, and make it stand out. The person reading your resume can jump around the bold parts and make a fast decision about you. This saves them time and quite literally gets their attention. LINE SPACING – The first problem that one pagers run into is that to make everything fit on one page, one has to sacrifice inter-line and inter-paragraph spacing, which wrecks the formatting, and makes the entire resume look like giant blob of text.

– The first problem that one pagers run into is that to make everything fit on one page, one has to sacrifice inter-line and inter-paragraph spacing, which wrecks the formatting, and makes the entire resume look like giant blob of text. USE BULLET POINTS, NOT PARAGRAPHS – Paragraphs are your enemy in your resume. As a guide, try to limit your bullets to 1-2 lines each, max.

– Paragraphs are your enemy in your resume. As a guide, try to limit your bullets to 1-2 lines each, max. FONT SIZES SHOULD BE 11pt or 12pt – Too small or too big and the content isn’t quite readable. suggested by Juanda Calloway (linkedin.com/profile/view?id=6116983) (Added on Aug 26th, 2014)

USING THE RIGHT KEYWORDS (#2)

As an online marketer, I use keyword research all the time. As a job seeker, you need to know how this process works in principle, to fully understand why you need to spend time on it.

RECRUITERS SEARCH FOR KEYWORDS. When a recruiter searches LinkedIn, Indeed, Monster.com or any of the other career oriented networks/portals, or even their own applicant tracking system, your resume is scanned for very specific keywords which come from the job description that you’re being considered for. This is similar to how many forms of online marketing works in principle. It all comes down to matching keywords with searches very often.

HOW CAN I USE THIS TO MY ADVANTAGE? Use the exact keywords and keyphrases from the job description in your resume. Its that simple. Copy them from the job description, and paste them into your resume, and write words around them to make them fit there. Make sure it all fits together well. Then bold this stuff. All the bold phrases and words in my resume relate to exact phrases or bullet points from job descriptions that I was targeting.

DESCRIBE WHAT YOU DID (#3)

The biggest shortcoming of a one page resume though, is the lack of detail. The person who is evaluating your resume wants to know if you’re the right person for the job. Besides stuffing your resume with the right keywords in the right order, you need to explain yourself and why your experience is relevant to the job you’re being considered for. Explain the nature of your role, the results you achieved, the changes you implemented, the revenue you created; all the things that would make you more desirable than the next person.

BUT MY ONE PAGER LOOKS REALLY GOOD. IS THIS NECESSARY? Yes. It is. Reading between the lines takes more time than turning to the next page.

WARNING! This is not a licence to write a novel. You don’t want to mention that summer internship during the summer between sophomore and junior years in high school. As Juanda Calloway put it, “Please do not list every job you’ve ever had since the age of 16.”.Just stick to whats relevant to the job you’re applying for. (Added on Aug 26th, 2014)

If, however, you have taken relevant details to save space in order to get your resume down to less than a page, you’ve done yourself a disservice. Get your details back in your resume! If this pushes your resume to 2 pages, its absolutely fine. In fact, its better than a 1 pager without them.

All Comments Welcome

What do you think? Let me know if this post got something right or something wrong.

THANKS RECRUITERS

Thank you to all the recruiters, HR professionals and other folks who have given me feedback, advice and assistance. This post is dedicated to you folks who work hard to find the rest of us. Without your advice and edits to my resume, I’d have never created the resume that got me hired.

Specifically I’d like to thank those folks who went out of their way to educate me on what is really important:

Ana Maria Lopez (linkedin.com/profile/view?id=20998169) took the trouble to actually show me how to organize my resume to make it more standard and readable. Without her edits, I’d never have asked the question, “How important is it to make it all fit on one page?” She’s the first person who told me that I needed to use a 2 page format for my experience and aspirations.

Karthik Devendran (linkedin.com/in/karthikdev) sought me out, and tirelessly helped me to position myself and my skillets into the best format possible. His advice and structure was how I learned how to ensure that the most relevant parts of my experience were phrased in the same manner as the job descriptions to which I was applying. This one step alone noticibly increased my resume’s visibility on many hiring systems.

Krista Woznakewicz (linkedin.com/profile/view?id=17386624) helped me to correctly position my start-up experience as an asset, and helped me to craft a crisp and succinct summary. Her advice was pure gold. It completely changed the direction that every interview went, by steering it towards the right conversation topics.