
Ask HN: 2 page or 1 page resume? - testpass
When an applicant sends you their resume, do you prefer it to be one or two pages? Why?
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jasoncrawford
One page. Regardless of experience.

The point isn't to list everything you've done (it's not an academic CV). The
point is to convince me that you're worth interviewing, and give me a bit of
context for the interview. You can do that in a page no matter who you are.

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blooberr
I've looked over hundreds of resumes and it's never hurt the candidate for
submitting 1 or 2 pages.

If it takes the applicant 2 pages to convince me they're worth the time to
talk to, then that's fine.

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ianamartin
I do a ranking on the first page where I show my experience with various
technologies. I also put a legend off to the side.

5 stars for Python and SQL. (8-10 years experience), 4 stars for C#, web
frameworks like Pyramid, or flask (5-8), etc.

That's a grid that takes about a third of a page. I spend the rest of the page
explaining what I have done and where that's recent and relevant to the gig
I'm applying for.

I don't have a resume that I would send to anyone. I have a resume template
that gets customized for whatever job I'm looking at.

I keep the relevant stuff on one page and I put references on the the second.

Your mileage may vary, but this has worked extremely well for me.

On the flip side, when I'm looking to hire, I don't care if your resume is 1
page or 4. Honestly, I'm looking for a reason to toss it in the trash and get
to the next one. I'm looking for typos and stupid shit like that.

Don't tell me your list of things that you've done. It's probably bullshit
anyway. Tell me the kinds of things you are interested in doing. Tell me what
you are excited about and why and how it fits into why my company is doing.

That will make me pick up the phone and call you.

Your cover letter is far more important to me than your resume.

Edited to add: As a hiring manager, your resume needs to show me three things:
Can you think? Can you write? Can you work well with a team.

If you can do those things, I will hire you and train you.

And also PPS: I'm hiring right now. :)

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jaisonjustus
From my point of view, it doesn't really matters a resume should be a single
page or couple. But the thing that matters is how you market yourself.

A resume is a very similar to a marketing brochure. Imagine the scenario when
you get a brochure from second's car dealer and from BMW dealer. The purpose
of both are same, sell the car. Take the second's car dealers brochure, It
contains a lot of offer banner, a list of cars based on price range and more.
But when you get a BMW brochure, even you can't afford the vehicle but still
you admire, re-re-read the brochure, keep it in a good place etc. Why because
of its presentation. The presentation creates a storytelling mode which
increase the interest of the viewer as he turns each page.

Coming back to the resume, you can apply the same rule. Remove the constraint
of pages and start thinking from a different perspective of how to sell
yourself?. Give more focus to you strengths and the thinks you have done which
make you stand apart from the other candidates. A lot of people use different
ways to achieve this like improving the layout, visuals, Typography.

A resume filtering is the first process. There your resume should come in a
different category. By looking into the resume, the interviewer should feel
promising, trustworthy and creativity. A couple of years before I experimented
this same technique of shifting my typical resume to another marketing
brochure. And it worked. When I appeared for the interviews, the first thing
the interviewer said was my resume looks different from all other resumes that
we got, It's interesting and nice. now I am more eager to know about you. Same
scenario happens to me three times after that.

This experience taught me a lot of lesson's regarding marketing, psychology
and design. Now happy to shared it.

Peace

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lhorie
Doesn't matter. I wouldn't reject an applicant based on whether their resume
has two pages or whether they try to squeeze a ton of info in 10pt font.
Frankly, it wouldn't even affect my impression of the applicant in any way.

What matters is the contents. If you add a hobbies section to fill space,
it'll make you look very junior, for example. A long education section or
overly specific explanation of previous roles will have a similar effect.

If you have a ton of experience and need space to highlight experience w/
different stacks and/or team management aspects, then by all means, make a
long resume to make your seniority show through. In that case, covering a
broad number of aspects might reveal early that you're not a good fit for my
particular needs, but it might also help pass your resume around internally to
other teams where you could be a good fit.

Just don't BS it. It's pretty easy to catch buzzword-slinging w/ a phone or
face-to-face screening.

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ricardolopes
It depends. Some locations or cultures will favour one page, while others will
prefer more information on why they should care about you. But in my
experience, the cover letter will have way more impact than 1 vs 2 CV pages.

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nextweek2
Two, I want to read between the lines.

A CV has to be perfect, with a longer CV there is more chance for it to have a
mistake and weed that person out.

So many CVs are similar, picking people to interview is about removing those
with flaws up front.

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dagw
Two (or more) is perfectly fine, on two conditions:

First format it so that everything vital is on page one, even on a multi page
resume I should get a good idea about you are from just the first page.

Secondly, and more importantly, only write a multi page resume if you have
actually done enough stuff relevant to the position to warrant a multi page
resume. Don't pad your resume with irrelevancies just to make it look long.

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helmsb
I would try to stick to one if at all possible. If you have to go to two it
wouldn't be a deal breaker for me. The biggest problem is now days staffing
firms and recruiters pad and keyword stuff resumes so much that most of the
ones I see are basically meaningless (and most of theirs are two pages).

When I do get a one page resume it tends to be direct from the candidate and
generally more honest which sticks with me.

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Avalaxy
I have 2~3 pages. I write quite a bit about what I did at my last positions
and list the most important projects that I worked on and explain briefly what
I did for those projects. So far the only comments I have received on my
resume are that it's impressive.

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endymi0n
Usually two is the optimum for me, with one for entry level positions. I like
a clean, tasteful design that stresses focus and brevity with a small dose of
creativity (pointed eye candy, unusual hobbies, etc.), but not overdone. CTO
at a small to medium startup here.

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lwhalen
My resume is four pages or more, and I have zero problem getting hired.

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LoneWolf
Same with me, I don't understand why it should only have 1 or 2 pages, if I
have a lot of experience I want to put it there otherwise it will look like I
have less experience than I actually have it is impossible for me to fit
everything in 2 pages

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mhuangw
General rule seems to be one page unless you have a decade+ of experience.

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jusob
2 pages if enough experience. A listing of positions is not really
interesting, I want to know more about what the candidate did in each firm and
probably expand on one or two.

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haidrali
1 page because recruiters didn't have time for you to turn to next page. Make
use of appropriate font size and font style to cover as much as content as you
can

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icedchai
1 page for every 7 to 10 years of experience.

