How Long Should a Resume Be? One Page or Two

• Student, first job or recent graduate: one page, no exceptions.
• Early career (roughly up to ten years): one page in most cases; a second page only if it holds relevant, recent material.
• Experienced professional: two pages when your roles, projects and results genuinely need the room.
• Senior manager or executive: two pages, occasionally a little more for board roles, but the first page must make the case on its own.

The number of years is a guide, not a cutoff. Someone with eight years in three very different technical roles may need two pages, while someone with fifteen years in the same job may fit comfortably on one.

Recruiters skim a resume before they decide to read it. Every line that doesn’t support the job you want pushes the lines that do further down the page. A tight one-page resume makes your best evidence impossible to miss; a long one makes the reader search for it.

That said, cramming two pages of content onto one with tiny fonts and narrow margins is worse than an honest second page. If you need to drop below a 10-point font or shrink margins to almost nothing, it is time to cut or to move to two pages.

1. Jobs from more than 10 to 15 years ago: shorten them to one line (title, employer, years) or group them under “Earlier experience”.
2. Duties anyone in the role would have: “answered phones”, “attended meetings”.
3. Bullets that repeat the same skill in different jobs: keep the strongest example.
4. Basic skills every applicant has: email, internet, Microsoft Word.
5. An objective statement, “References available upon request” and a full street address.
6. Unrelated hobbies, and high school details once you have a college degree.

Read each bullet and ask: would the hiring manager for this job miss it if it were gone? If not, cut it.

• Fill at least half of the second page. A second page with three lines looks like a formatting accident.
• Put your strongest and most recent material on page one: summary, key skills and your current or last job.
• Add your name and “Page 2” at the top of the second page in case the pages are separated.
• Keep older roles brief so the second page doesn’t read like a full history.

• Academic CV: used for faculty, research and many grant or fellowship applications. It has no fixed length and grows with your publications, teaching and presentations.
• Federal government jobs: resumes submitted through USAJOBS must follow the length and content rules stated in the announcement and on USAJOBS. These rules have changed in recent years, so read the current instructions before you apply.
• Some clinical, legal or technical roles may ask for a list of licenses, cases or projects as a separate attachment rather than a longer resume.

When an application gives instructions on length or format, they always beat general advice, including this guide.