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One of the most common questions I get about resumes is the page limit question. Resumes should only be one page, right?

It’s actually OK—and increasingly common—for most people in most industries to use two page resumes. In some circumstances, such as those with extensive leadership experience or in fields like academia or medicine, three or more pages is also acceptable.

That said, if your resume continues onto a second page, you need to make sure that you’ve covered these bases:

  1. Ensure that you’re not being repetitive or adding unnecessary detail to the descriptions of your prior experience. I’ve reviewed several resumes that have entire lists of bullet points copy/pasted for similar jobs, and this doesn’t help hiring managers who are looking for the unique skills and accomplishments in each of your prior positions.

  2. Check that you’re not using unnecessarily wordy descriptions. Resumes are written in a kind of shorthand that makes it easy for hiring managers to find the key information they need. You’d be surprised how many people can trim a few lines of text off their resume just by removing extra instances of small words like “a,” “the,” “my,” and “our.”

  3. Confirm that your second page isn’t only caused by formatting issues like wide margins or extra line spacing. Your margins can range from 0.5” to 1”, and your font size can be between 10-12pt. Trust me, most people can fit A LOT more content onto one page than they realize.

That last point is surprisingly crucial. The vast majority of the time that I work with clients who are stressed about not being able to fit their resume onto one page it’s because of line spacing. So before you make any major cuts to the content (like removing an entire job from your work history), select everything (Ctrl+A) and change your line spacing to single-spaced with 0pt before/after each line.

Need some help with adjusting your resume to fit onto one or two pages? I can help with a resume review over email. Learn more on the coaching page or to get started.