Guidelines to Maintain the Length of Resume

As you know that resume is the best marketing tool for the job seeker. Now, how to use this tool and utilize its benefits is in job seeker’s hand. Now you may wonder how? Isn’t it? 

It’s very simple.  Whenever we are required to write the resume, what we do is search sample resume for the category of our interest on career related websites.  Have you ever observed the length of such resumes; they are very short and precise. All the parts of resume like objective, experience, achievements, etc are up to the mark, no more-no less.

So, in today’s competitive world, not only writing meaningful resume has become essential, but also to keep the resume’s length short and sweet. There are certain factors that can increase the length of the resume.  If these factors are taken care of, then the resume can be not only readable, but also short, unique and precise. 

Following are the factors that can increase the length of the resume:

1.      The main part of the resume is Objective. It is the starting point of the resume. It is said that good start will give you a good end. So be very careful while writing the objective for the resume. Concentrate on the job position required and accordingly write the career objective. Objective is all about 3W’s, that is, who, why and what.  Your career objective in the resume must reflect who are you, what job position you are interested in and why you are suitable for that job post. Ideally objective must be within 10-12 words. Job seekers tend to write vague objectives having no meaning using keywords like hardworking, etc. You are a job seeker, you need the job, so it is always assumed that you must do hard work. So no need of such vague keywords and sentences.

2.       Experienced person tend to increase the length of the resume for writing long experience details. Now, recruiter has nothing to do with all these details. He is just interested to know whether you possess all the skills for required job position, can you handle the critical situations, what abilities you have. So it’s always better to write experience using keywords, and stress on the responsibilities handled. That is the major area where recruiter will look into.

3.      Fresher job seekers tend to increase the length of the resume by writing strengths, achievements, hobbies, etc. Strengths must be written, but in appropriate way. Best way is to use keywords again instead of long sentences. Recruiters go through the hobbies section to examine whether you are interested in other activities or not. Now, this is an optional field. Not only fresher, but also experienced job seekers tend to increase the length of the resume by writing long sentences in this section. It is not at all required.

4.      All job seekers tend to make mistake while choosing the font size and style. If Times New roman with size 12 is used, you resume looks short and professional. Other font styles are not that professional and they also need large space. So font size and style must be used properly.

Finally, it is commonly observed that ideally fresher job seeker’s resume must be of1-2 pages, and for experienced job seekers 2-3 pages. For senior management level it can go above 3 pages maximum up to 4 pages. So accordingly, one can search the resume samples and cover letter samples free for appropriate category.