A colleague working at a prestigious university for the past 15 years posted the following on his Facebook:  “I have reached the time in my career when I try to make my résumé as short, rather than as long, as possible.”

Yet, recruiters complain about the increasing length of résumés they have to plough through. One recently received a 42-page whopper. It seems as though the résumé is experiencing a kind of obesity epidemic.

So, is our colleague right?  How long should your résumé be?

There is no “right” answer to the question, but it might help you make a good judgment call if you consider what jobs your résumé has to perform. The résumé should:

1. offer an interesting and appealing snapshot of you and your career
2. summarize the highlights of years of work (although it can’t possibly do justice to all that hard labor!)
3. set you apart from the other people whose résumés clog recruiters’ inboxes
4. give recruiters a clear sense of where you have been and where you are hoping to go; tells a story
5. account for your time during the past x years including explaining gaps or a track change
6. make the recruiter’s life easy with good layout, no typos and only necessary detail
7. match the requirements of the job (or you will be wasting everyone’s time) and use language meaningful to the recruiters for each position (some translation and customization is necessary)
8. entice the reader to want to know more about you (it is, after all, a teaser with a main purpose to get you an interview where you can present yourself more fully)

So, why do people like to overstuff their résumés with details?

Hypotheses include that they:

1. are nervous about leaving out critical detail so instead throw in everything but the kitchen sink
2. don’t understand their strengths or their value to effectively highlight
3. don’t take the trouble to think about what they actually accomplished and prefer to simply list past responsibilities
4. forget to think about their story from the reader’s point of view

A common mistake is to think your résumé is all about you.  It’s not.  It’s all about the recruiter – what will s/he find interesting? What is s/he looking for right now?

So, what are the essential ingredients for a successful résumé?

1. attractiveness and ease of reading with good use of white space
2. ease in finding critical details including your name and contact details, places and dates of your past employment and your job titles/roles
3. keywords and vocabulary 100% relevant to the industry/function/role
4. tells a story a 30-second scan can pick up
5. frames past accomplishments recruiters can quickly apply to their own organizational needs

By following these guiding principles, you will probably find a lot of editing to do on your current draft.

The top two criteria recruiters use to scan your résumé are evaluating how your skill set matches what’s required and deciding how you will fit into the culture.  If you meet their requirements and summarize them as succinctly and as specifically as possible, you are more likely to get your foot in the door.

Remember the meaning of the word “Résumé” is “Summary”. Therefore, what are you going to cut out of yours to make it punchy and more effective?

Fredia Woolf , founder of Woolf Consulting, blogs to help people improve their workplace effectiveness and optimize their careers.  As an organizational consultant and leadership coach, she works with clients to increase insight, inspiration and impact. She can be reached at fwoolf@woolfconsulting.com.

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Putting your Résumé to Work – the 8 Jobs it has to do  https://blog.execsearches.com/2010/03/10/putting-your-resume-to-work-%e2%80%93-the-8-jobs-it-has-to-do/

Last updated on April 16th, 2010 at 12:33 am