How long should a resume be?

One page if you can, two if you have earned it. The honest rule is that length should follow content, not the other way around: nobody is impressed by two pages, and nobody counts them. They skim.

Early in your career

Early career, one page is nearly always right — a second page of coursework and interests dilutes the first. Lead with whatever is strongest: a placement, a project, a part-time job with real responsibility, then education.

After roughly a decade

After roughly a decade, two is normal, and squeezing that into one by dropping to seven-point type is worse than the extra page. Make sure page one can stand alone, because it is often the only page read closely.

Academic and some international CVs

An academic CV — publications, grants, teaching, conferences — is a different document and can run to many pages. Some countries and employers also expect more personal detail than a US-style resume carries. See resume vs CV for where the conventions differ.

What to cut first

• Skills you would not want to be asked about in an interview.
• A hobbies line that says “socialising”, “reading” or “travel”.
• Every job back to 2004 at equal length — older roles can compress to a title, employer and dates.
• Duties that any holder of the job would have had.
• “References available on request”, which everyone assumes.
• A summary that repeats your most recent role in adjectives.

Tricks that backfire

Shrinking margins to almost nothing, cutting the font below about 10 points, or squeezing line spacing makes a page harder to read, and a reader who has to work at it skims faster. If it doesn’t fit comfortably, cut words rather than space.

In the FreeCVWriter builder the preview is paginated into real A4 sheets as you type, so you can see the moment a line pushes onto page two and decide whether it has earned its place.