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When it comes time to update your resume, ever find yourself decreasing margins, font size, line spacing and a dozen other cheats to keep it down to the vaunted size: a single page? Then this is good news for you! The “one page only” rule is quickly going the way of, well, printed-page resumes themselves, finds a survey released by Accountemps, a staffing firm, on March 20.
While more than half (52 percent) of executives polled still felt that single-page resumes were ideal for staff-level resumes, 44 percent expressed a preference for those running two pages. This number is down almost one-fifth from a decade ago, when the number preferring two pages was but 25 percent. (73 percent preferred a single page.) Even lengths once considered to be unwavering no-nos — three pages — are now having their day in the sun. For executive roles, nearly one-third (31 percent) cited this as ideal, up from 7 percent 10 years ago.
“Many employers are willing to spend a little more time reviewing application materials so they can more easily determine who is most qualified and act quickly to secure interviews with these candidates,” said Max Messmer, chairman of Accountemps and author of “Managing Your Career For Dummies”.
Still, don’t go overboard. Just because permission has been granted to bump your resume back up to Times New Roman 12 point again, doesn’t mean that hiring managers need to know about the time five jobs ago that your work was called “efficient.”
“Employers want to see that applicants can prioritize information and concisely convey the depth of their experience,” he said.
These and other gems are also conveyed in eWEEK’s career classic, “10 Ways to Tweak Your Tech Resume.”