Creating a resume that effectively captures your relevant background and qualifications as they relate to a specific job, is a critical step in the job search process. One of the most important decisions in resume writing is determining how long it should be. There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to the length of a resume since this depends on a candidate’s career stage, as well as such other factors as job title, and industry. Crafting a resume is a balance between brevity and ensuring you capture all relevant details regarding your background.

In this article, we will discuss the appropriate length for resumes at varying career stages and provide practical suggestions to ensure your resume captures the attention of recruiters and hiring managers. Understanding how to tailor resume length to your specific background, as well as industry norms, increases the likelihood that you will make a strong impression and receive a job offer.

When To Create a One Page Resumes

One-page resumes are most common for recent high school or college graduates, as well as those candidates with less than 10 years’ employment experience. Most job seekers at this stage should be able to sufficiently condense their employment history into a single page without sacrificing valuable information.

Most recruiters will peruse a resume for 15 seconds on first reading, so it is critical to condense the wording and ensure that relevant key words are inserted early in the document, such as in the summary section. In this age of AI, it is also common for recruiters to pass resumes through a scanning filter to find relevant keywords pertaining to the job description. If the scan finds no matches your resume will be removed from consideration. Think of the summary statement as the tag line of your personal brand: what do you want the employer to know about your experience and skills, so they move you to the next stage of the process?

When It is Acceptable to Create Multi-Page Resumes

It is acceptable to create a one-or-two-page resume if you have ten or more years of work experience. In general, resumes should not go back more than 10 years, except if you are applying to a senior or executive-level role and your resume needs to highlight your career progression. Attempting to condense your background to one-page in these cases risks omitting relevant details of your work background, such as skills and accomplishments that would attract the attention of recruiters and hiring managers. Keeping your resume to two pages will still enable it to be scanned by most AI software.

The exception to the two-page rule is when you work in academia since you will want to list all your published papers, research projects, and speaking engagements, as well as education, and any awards or honors. All this information will extend your resume by several pages (10 pages is the accepted maximum).

Recommended Resume Length by Years’ Experience (as of 2025)

Here is a quick snapshot of how years’ work experience influences resume length best practice.

Below are tips for tailoring your resume based on your career stage:

• Entry-Level Applicants: Your resume should be one page and emphasize education, extracurricular activities (both school and community-based), internships, and any relevant special projects completed in school.
• Early-Stage Candidates: Your resume should include related topics to entry-level candidates, but you should now be able to include one or two employers and highlight responsibilities, skills development, training completed, along with work accomplishments.
• Mid-Career Professionals: Keep the length of your resume to two pages and include work history over the past the years. Highlight those job responsibilities, skills, and accomplishments that are most relevant to the job you are applying for.
• Academic and Research Roles: When applying to roles in academia, it is customary practice to create a curriculum vitae rather than resume. The Vitae includes employment history, teaching experience, graduate assistantships, research projects, papers published, speaking engagements, as well as honors and awards. Because of the amount of information included, the vitae can be up to ten pages in length, but the recommended length is a maximum of four pages.
• Senior-Level Executives: Those candidates applying to senior-level and executive roles typically possess greater than ten years’ experience but should still adhere to the two-page rule and omit or condense roles that occurred greater than 10 years ago. You can use a functional format for these earlier jobs that limit the information to the name of the company, job title, and years employed. The focus for each role within the past ten years should be on accomplishments, using precise statistics, where possible, e.g., Successfully led a 12-person sales team that increased quarterly sales by 15%, reduced client attrition by 38%, and increased overall department profitability by 17%.

Key points for senior executives

• Focus on the most recent and relevant roles. Do not be concerned if this exposes gaps, but they should be briefly explained in the resume, e.g., 2021-2023: took a sabbatical to author a book or care for family member, etc.
• For early work experiences, it can be useful to group them under a separate heading: Early Career Stage and keep these listings brief (in functional format) since senior candidates want to focus on the later, more relevant roles.
• Highlight major accomplishments at the top of the resume under a separate heading and include relevant terms, keywords, and statistics that closely match the requirements of the role.
• Best practice would be to prepare a longer version of your resume (keep to maximum three pages) in the event an employer asks to view your entire educational and work history in greater detail.

Tips for Industry-specific resume length: 

There is no umbrella rule regarding the length of resumes across industries. The primary consideration is to examine your industry’s culture in terms of job search protocol and tailoring your resume to adhere to these accepted standards.

Examples:

• Government Positions: These roles often require detailed information regarding the applicant’s education and work history and the resumes of candidates for these roles may extend to three pages to capture all required information.
• Creative Industries: Employers in this sector typically prefer a concise resume since there is often a portfolio of work that is included in the application materials.
• Academia: As noted above, a curriculum vitae for a role within academia can range between four and ten pages due to the amount of information that is included.

Extra tip: If you are transitioning into a new industry, it can be helpful to speak with current employees of those companies you are interested in to determine acceptable resume length standards.

Tips for creating a concise resume:

While you want to adjust the length of your resume to suit your level of experience, it’s also important to adjust the content, let us also consider the overall spacing of the document.

• Limit to 3-5 Bullet Points Per Item

When you list your work history, include such information as the name of employers, dates employed, and job titles. This information is not in bullet form but is included right below the section heading. The bullets will be included when listing job-related information, such as responsibilities and accomplishments. The best practice is to first list the most relevant responsibilities to the job you are applying for and include a maximum of five bullets for recent experience and three bullets for work experience that is further in the past.

The focus of bullet points for candidates with mid- to- senior-level experience should be on outlining accomplishments and successes rather than solely listing responsibilities. Most recruiters and hiring managers will be able to determine your job duties from your title. Quantify your accomplishments with statistics and data to gain the interest of the hiring team.

• Keep Bullet Points Short

Create concise bullet points, no greater than one or two lines per bullet and use verbs and brief descriptions, e.g., Created digital content across all social media channels that increased audience engagement by 30%. Information presented in this manner will enhance the ability of scanning software to go through the resume and find relevant keywords. The more concise the bullet points are, the more readable the document will be, and the more likely valuable information will be detected.

• Layout of the Resume

Use sufficient white space to make the document visibly appealing and easy-to-read. Suggested is 1.5 to 2.0 spacing between sections and 1.15 spacing between lines. Standard margins for resumes is one inch on all sides. Do not include photos or special fonts but use the most common, such as Arial, Times New Roman or Calibri and use bold type for each new heading.

Conclusion / (Wrap-up) A one-page to one-and-a-half-page resume is sufficient for entry level and early-stage job seekers, while a one-page to two-page resume (or three in some cases) is considered standard for mid-career and senior-level professionals. The most important consideration when discussing resume length is whether every detail included is directly relevant to the job to which you are applying. Customize your resume for every job. This does not mean you need to reinvent the wheel, but to highlight different background information based on the needs of the opportunity. In the end, recruiters and hiring managers are primarily interested in a concise, well-written resume that highlights pertinent skills, experience and accomplishments. 

See Also

How do ATS platforms filter out resumes

Why Candidate Screening Takes Long