How long should a resume be? One page or two

One page if you have less than about five years of relevant experience. Two pages if you have more and every section earns its space. Three pages or more only for academic CVs, senior executive roles, or countries and sectors that expect a full career history.

Length is not a score. Recruiters prefer a tight one-page resume to a padded two-page one, and a full, relevant two-page resume to a cramped one-page one with tiny text.

Whatever the length, page one does the work. Your name, target title, contact details, summary and most recent relevant experience must all be there. If a recruiter only reads the first page, they should still want to call you.

• Remove jobs older than about 10–15 years, or reduce them to one line each.
• Cut bullets that describe duties rather than results.
• Combine short, similar roles at the same company.
• Drop the objective, references line, and unrelated hobbies.
• Shorten your skills list to what the target job needs.
• Tighten wording — “Responsible for managing” becomes “Managed”.

Squeezing margins to a few millimetres and text below 10 points makes a resume hard to read and can confuse ATS parsing. If it doesn’t fit at a comfortable size, cut content instead.

If you use two pages, check where the break falls. A job title alone at the bottom of page one, or a single line spilling onto page two, looks careless. Use a builder with a live page preview so you can see exactly what the PDF will look like.