Rant: Resumes can be 2 pages!!

Yeah, seriously.

The following is just my opinion, but...

On the one hand, there is no reason why anyone just out of college or with less than 5 years experience should have more than one page. Any more than one page in that case might signal poor writing/editing and critical thinking skills.

Resume reviewers for more junior positions get a million resumes for each listing posted, so don't waste their time and your first big shot at an impression. That's the reality of it.

Folks with less than 10 years experience after school should probably also stick to one page and save the details for discussion in the interviews, just to play it safe.

After 10 years experience, especially if one has moved around alot and/or has various important (not just resume pad crap) industry awards or other serious merits to list, going a bit over 1 page should be seen as okay, so long as the job descriptions are edited down and not just cruft.

Resume reviewers have just a bit more patience for reviewing middle and more senior-level management candidate resumes and may be more willing to go onto a second page if they are reviewing candidates for something other than junior-level jobs (for which, again, thay are simply inundated in resumes).

After 15 years of experience I'd figure a person could extend further down into the 2nd page. But again, only as needed after seriously hard-core editing the whole thing down to Hemingway-like terseness. And make sure the bulk of what you want them to notice experience-wise is on the FIRST PAGE, not the second one (which still may only get a glance, realistically).

After that 15-year mark though...I would not go any further than down the 2nd page after major hard edits. People really don't care what coffee and TPS reports one may have fetched 12 or 17 or 23 years ago, even though it may appear to make for a nice paragraph.

Even and especially for more senior-level positions their patience may run out for people who can't boil down to what's low-priority bearing little mention and what's immediately relevant and demanding just a bit more information.

In any case, the oldest positions listed should be the shortest in detail, with all really old or junior level stuff perhaps even just single-line mention of title with little if any description at all for the sake of saving space.

If you have all that other more recent crud filling much-needed priority space, why give anything really old or really junior more than basic mention. If they want to know more about those positions, save that discussion for the interviews.

Anyhoo, the above is in no way specially qualified.

Just my opinion.