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Comment by metalliqaz | Hacker News Reader

Not sure what is going on in the hiring world, since I have been in the same job for a long time, but there seems to be a misalignment about the proper length of a resume.

This app suggests to keep it to one page. When I've been involved in hiring new people, the resumes that get attention are the ones with detailed descriptions of project experience. They are 3 or 4 pages long. The managers want something to read because the candidates without adequate education and/or experience for the posted position will not make it into their hands.

In my field (computer engineer), the "short" description that matters is 1 line: masters degree, 15 years experience, security clearance, not a diversity hire.

After that, they want deep detail about skills.

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I religiously keep mine to 1 page, and even shorter if possible. Imagine your potential interviewer. He or she is booked in back-to-back meetings all day. Has not a lot of time to prepare. In the 2 minutes between his last meeting and your interview, he scrambles to print off a copy of your resume and give it a quick review. His eyeballs scan the top of the page for interesting "headline" material, and then maybe look at the first two or three bullet points from your most recent employer. That might be it! All that labor you put into that detailed technical info on page 4 might not even make it out of the printer, let alone get into your interviewer's head. The only person who is likely to read all four pages is your hiring manager, and if by page 3 it's just a bunch of technologies you used in a now-defunct company back in 1996, it's not going to impress anyone.

Additionally, the ability to summarize a highly technical and detailed topic down to a very short "executive review" is an important and sought-after job skill. Keep it short and include only the best results of your work.

Your post got a variety of responses. My take as someone who did hiring (as a manager) for a high profile tech company for 10+ years (not a FAANG but we competed with FAANGs for talent.) I've probably seen close to ten thousand programmer resumes over that time.

My big advice is not to take resume length guidelines literally. Crafting a resume requires balancing terseness and completeness. Terseness out respect for the reader, completeness to ensure your candidacy is well represented.

It is an art to capture your essence concisely. Someone in the thread said they only list the company and the tools they use, which to me is a huge mistake. If you just say something like "Developed in Node, React, CSS" you give the reader no idea of your actual contribution. It could mean "made tweaks to existing system based on explicit direction from a product person" or it could mean "Drove re-design of the system in these technologies, achieving X improvement in performance, Y improvement in maintenance cost. Partnered with business SMEs to develop requirements, and ensured high technical standards on the team." The second is a much more senior/desirable candidate and if you are that but don't capture these ideas in your resume, you won't stand out.

On the other hand I have seen resumes where each job has a half-a-page narrative description. Almost universally, these descriptions are actually filled with job/company specific terms that are totally meaningless to anyone outside of that company. I am strongly biased to not hire anyone with such a resume because it's a sign that the person's communication ability/relevance filter is low.

Anyway, as a practical guide, I do advise people to shoot for a terse 1 or max 2 page resume, BUT if you find yourself cutting out really important points to fit the space, then don't do that.

I may not be representative, but I tend to keep it to a page or maybe two. You can fit a lot of info into a page and the 3+ page resumes I've seen have been way too dense. For me it's not an exhaustive list of work history and tasks, but things applicable to the new role. Ideally, I'd restate the job requirements (which is, what, usually a paragraph or 4-5 bullet points?) using my work history.

I often find the just degree too vague and job titles aren't representative. So if you filled the page with that info I find that isn't helpful, either.

this makes contrast with every other opinion I've ever heard about keeping the CV short and clean

There is a certain niche that’s impressed by a long CV, but it’s not he kind of niche I’d want to impress. They’re people who say things like “look how many versions of PHP he can use. And he knows how to use The Linux!”.

That's why I bring it up.

I'm sure it's important for the first page to be concise and eye-catching. But why would more info be bad?

Many hiring managers don't look at resumes longer than 6 seconds. More information is not necessarily better and arguably worse for competitive job openings.

I’ve always kept it short. I try to summarize things I’ve done to a high level (the impact and what tools I used). If a bullet point stands out to an interviewer they can ask more during.

To be clear, "not a diversity hire" above is not intended to be a positive attribute.

Are you from Europe perhaps? Or do the skillsets in your field stay relevant longer?

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