mrstevegross's picture

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Submitted by mrstevegross on
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General Questions and Comments

What ever happened to the 1-page resume? I get resumes now-and-again, and invariably the candidate has decided he needs to put his life's work into the document. I end up with 3+ page resumes. They're great for presenting lots of details, but it's really difficult to *quickly* assess a person's background. Given that plenty of resume-advisors continue to recommend 1-pagers, why do so few candidates follow this advice?

--Steve

twinsen's picture
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Submitted by twinsen on Friday July 9th, 2010 4:59 pm

In my experience, recruiters tend to manipulate the format. 

I submitted a one page resume and the recruiter broke it down with lots of white space into multiple pages and stuck their logo and header at the top too.  I did mine according to the MT standards but was shocked when I arrived at the interviewer's desk that my 1 page became a 2 1/2 page.

Now I know when I recruit through a recruitment firm why I'm getting multiple page resumes landing on my desk.  As I recruit for IT, it seems to be worse because they must do some kind of profile about the person's skillset and stick about 30 buzzwords at the top of the resume too.

 

 

dude95's picture
Submitted by dude95 on Monday July 12th, 2010 4:32 pm

 The US tends to be on the forefront of the 1 page resume push.  I've had experience with Australia, Europe, and India and they all have a tendency to be much bigger.  I look at hundreds of resumes a year (most being IT) and 95% are greater than 3 pages.  I've had technical resumes come to me (especially from India) that have been 15-20 pages.  I still only read 1 or 2 pages, they get points deducted in my assessment of their writing skills as well as questions about their overall judgment.  

This is not to disparage those countries (I worked in Australia in just as high quality environment at the US).  It's just a tendency that I've noticed.  Hopefully we'll see better in the future.

timrutter's picture
Submitted by timrutter on Tuesday July 13th, 2010 12:58 am

I got the shock of my life when I moved from the UK to Australia. For years in the UK we were constantly told to keep a CV (resume) to two side, one sheet of A4. Once I started contacting recruiters and companies in Australia, I was being told 'the bigger, the better'. Six pages is not unusual.

Now being the other side of the recruiting table, I much prefer one and two sided resumes

Tim