How Long Is Too Long For A Resume?

By Marcelle Yeager

How long should your résumé be? It's a long-standing debate among recruiters, but there is one thing they agree on: it needs to be relevant. This is true whether you're just out of school or have worked for 20 years, and it means your résumé needs to be concise and tailored to that job.

Recruiters won't read a full bulleted list of your duties and everything you did at every job. They only want to read what in your background is applicable to the particular job and/or company to which you're applying. So your task is to make the information easily available.

If you've just graduated from college or even graduate school immediately following college, it won't be hard to keep your résumé to one page. Even if you already have a one- or two-page résumé, there are probably things you can remove that don't relate to your current job application. The great news is that LinkedIn or a personal website can be used as a space to put all that extra information. Think of it as the curriculum vitae (CV) version of your résumé – it can be as long as it needs to be.