Field Notes / Resume
How Long Should a Resume Be? The Wrong Question
Nobody reading the stack counts your pages. They notice how much of each page earns its place.
Every line carries a result. The reader finds something on each one.
One real line, then duties. The reader stops looking after the third.
I never counted pages
I read stacks of resumes for nearly ten years of hiring. I never once counted the pages. I noticed something else, always the same thing. How far I got before I stopped finding anything.
A dense two-page resume reads fast. A thin two-page resume feels endless. Same length. The difference is what sits on the lines.
The rule people repeat
One page. It comes from American graduate hiring, where candidates have little history and the convention makes sense. It gets repeated as a universal law by people who have never screened for a senior role.
Push a twenty-year career onto one page and you strip out the evidence. You are left with titles and dates. The reader learns where you worked. They learn nothing about what happened while you were there.
What length follows from
Length is an output, not a target. It follows from how much relevant evidence you hold.
- Early career. One page. There is not enough yet to fill two, and padding shows.
- Mid career. Two pages. Room for scope and results without filler.
- Senior and long careers. Two pages, sometimes three. Older roles compress to a line each. Recent roles carry the weight.
- Academic and research. A CV follows different rules entirely. Publications and grants belong in full.
Regional habits differ too. Norway and much of Europe accept two pages without comment.
The test that replaces the page count
Read your own resume and mark every line that names a result. A number, an outcome, a thing that happened because you were there. Then look at what is unmarked.
Unmarked lines are duties. "Responsible for the regional pipeline" tells a reader what your job description said. It does not tell them how you performed. Cut those lines or turn them into results. Whatever length remains is your correct length.
What to compress first
- Roles older than fifteen years. One line each. Title, company, dates.
- Duty statements. Anything that describes the job rather than your performance in it.
- Skills walls. Forty tools with no context reads as filler and helps nobody.
- Early education detail. The degree stays. The coursework goes.
- Objective statements. Replace with one line naming what you do and the result you deliver.
Stop asking how many pages. Ask how many lines a reader would stop on. Keep those. The length sorts itself out.