Why Your 2-page Resume Sucks
So you’ve spent several days to rewrite your resume. You’ve collected feedback from your friends and asked your mom to check for typos. Naturally, you now feel obligated to update your LinkedIn profile with the exact same information…
Does this sound familiar to you?
That’s basically the painful process I follow every time I look for a job. It always starts when I open my resume. Yeah, the one I used to get my current job. Right before I open the document I still believe I will see the greatest resume mankind has ever crafted. That feeling usually doesn’t last very long…
And here we are again! I need to rewrite my resume because the previous one won’t help me to get to the next level. But how do I do it this time? Is it going to be better compared to the previous one?
Well, if you find yourself in a similar situation you should consider one very important thing. No human is going to read your resume entirely! The only thing that will read it in great details is an Application Tracking System. Basically a software that helps recruiters to spend an average of 6 seconds reviewing an individual resume. Now, try to picture what it’s like to read your 2-page (if not 3-page) resume, and another one, and hundreds of them… Recruiters are flooded with thousands of old-fashion multi-page resumes that make their job harder and harder. Are we just doing the same thing over and over without thinking about it? Does a multi-page resume look more impressive than a straightforward one-page resume? Will you look unprofessional if you don’t put at least 2 pages on it? That’s the kind of questions I asked myself before I reached a simple conclusion: my 2-page resume sucks.
So I did myself a big favor and decided to go with a one-page resume:
I don’t claim it’s the best you’ve ever seen but it simply worked for me. I followed a great guide to create my one-page resume and was able to land interviews at Google, Facebook, Uber, and a few other big names in the Tech Industry. Ultimately, I received a great offer from Twitter and took it.
Several recruiters spontaneously commented about the one-page format and for once I felt I did something right with my resume. Remember you have 6 seconds to make the difference. So do you want to write a book or just the key things you want people to take from your resume?
— Benoît
