Although different employers may handle resume’s differently, they all have something in common: they only glance or scan through the resume’s until they convince themselves that the resume is worth serious attention. Because of the limited time that employers have to read resume’s, many people believe that a resume should be as short as possible so that the employer can read it all. “Instructor Blog #2” says just that. At a first glance this sounds like good advice, but let’s examine it carefully.
A candidate with lots of experience and/or a long work history has much more to convey than candidates with less experience. This might not fit well onto one page. If this person “shortens” their resume, they must either remove items that demonstrate valuable experience or dumb down the description of their experience to the point where it’s vague and practically meaningless.
Let’s say a candidate does shorten their resume to one page. Does that mean that the employer will now read every item of that resume? I seriously doubt that. The employer will scan through the resume, quickly identify some interesting items and make a judgment. Nothing prevents them from going through the same process with a two page resume.
The key to writing a resume that makes a good impression is organization. The employer must be able to quickly find something that impresses them. The more items that appear on a well-organized resume, the higher the chance the employer will find something interesting.
During my time at Purdue, I applied for an internship each summer. I applied to software and hardware companies such as Microsoft, NVIDIA, Motorola, Cisco, Amazon.com, and IBM. Every time I used a two page resume and every time I was invited for an interview. I have received many comments about my resume from these employers, but I was never told it was too long.
I distinctively recall one of these comments because it emphasizes on how important it is not to leave anything out of the resume. A recruiter for IBM looked at my resume and was impressed by the fact that I got an 800 in the math part of the SAT. She immediately scheduled me for a phone interview. This item had nothing to do with the job, it happened while a long time ago (while I was still in high school), and was at the very end of the second page, yet it made a big difference and got me an interview. Interestingly enough, if I were to have shortened the resume, this would have been the first item I would have removed because it had the least to do with the job I was applying to.
My 100% success rate with a two page resume leads me to believe that the advice about two page resume’s is not good advice for everyone, at least not me.
Resume Length
I think your situation is very interesting, and I'm a little surprised by the success that you've actually had with a 2 page resume. I honestly think it depends a lot on the actual field your in, how many people are applying for that distinct job, along with countless other factors. If you're in engineering, for example, and your GPA reads 3.5+ at the top, I think your resume could be 8 pages long and you'll probably still be getting called in for an interview. With that said, I could see how constructing a two page resume could in fact work to the applicant's benefit, as it draws distinct attention to his or her self. If I were reviewing college internship resumes, and all of a sudden came across a "two-pager" it would certainly catch my eye.
The problem with the kitchen sink
I can point this out about putting everything in your resume: it inherently makes it unfocused. You might think that the best option is to put everything that could be of any value on your resume. Then, you could just take the same resume from job to job, because there would be no reason, nor any real way, to make changes. The problem is that this won't make you specifically the right person for any particular job. Remember what our readings said: don't make the evaluator connect the dots. You should be telling a specific story. Anything you can do to make the evaluator's task easier is almost always a good idea. If it comes down to you and one other person, and everything in the other person's resume points to this specific job, and yours points to many different possible jobs, its possible that the evaluator will think that you're more suitable, because you have more "stuff," but it is equally likely that the evaluator will think that you are a generalist rather than a specific fit—or worse, somebody who isn't sure what he wants to be, and perhaps somebody looking for a change in a year or two. Honestly, it's a gamble either way, and I wouldn't tell you to abandon something that's working for you. However, I can show you statistical data (if that does it for you) that suggests that the more you make yourself seem specifically matched for a particular job the more likely you are to get an interview.
And this is where the other topic you addressed comes in: tangential but important material (like an SAT score). Personally, I can't recall a time I've seen a resume that included a score from a standardized test (although companies will give you their own, like the Wonderlic and Myers & Briggs), and I think you would want to be judicious about attaching it, because it's possible the evaluator would think you were locked into a college mindset rather than a professional mindset. The evaluator may be more interested in demonstrable, concrete projects rather than test scores. However, it obviously worked in this scenario, so it does raise the question of what to do with information like this. My answer would be that the cover letter is often a great place for material that makes you marketable but that doesn't fit into a resume easily. The interview is also a great place to bring up this kind of thing, because it makes you memorable. Remember that the resume and cover letter are really Trojan Horses; their job is to get you an interview. You can then attempt to guide the interview to say what you want to say.
Finally, the issue of resume length is sticky, but I can tell you this: it's true that a two-page resume will not be a big deal in some positions, but it will immediately disqualify you from others. A one-page resume will not be an automatic disqualification. Because of this, why take the risk? Between the resume and the cover letter, you should be able to construct a clear, focused narrative. Remember the advice from the instructor blog: "Many people have trouble making their resume fit a page. Your resume must fit on one page, and even people with vast amounts of experience, skills, and awards can produce a one-page resume. This is mostly a issue of selecting and presenting the appropriate material for a specific job rather than trying to dump everything you've ever done into one generic resume." When you start going over one page in a resume, you're getting into Curriculum Vitae territory (which is a different document that is a more thorough explication of pretty much everything you have done). Just to make this personal, I currently have 11 separate one-page resumes, and three eight-page Curriculum Vitae. They're obviously related, but they do different jobs.
So, the distillation of this is that, as you have picked up, the rules for a good resume are situation-specific, but this doesn't mean that they are random. There are many things you can do to give yourself a genuine advantage, and one of them is to select appropriate material and provide a focused, specific, concrete narrative in your employment documents rather than a total list of everything you have done. Another is to make your resume one page, and to use the cover letter and your interview to communicate the other material that you feel is important. These moves won't work in every situation, but over the long haul they will give you a clear tactical advantage. Ultimately, the trick is to determine what you think the job wants (this is why we analyze) and then respond appropriately.
Two pages
I always wondered when it was an appropriate time to use a two page resume. I think at this stage in our job searching endeavor it is a bit ridiculous to have more than a one page resume. But when is it acceptable to move beyond two pages? I always figured it was more for established professionals that have a lot of job experience. Is it possible to go beyond two pages? Or would it that counterproductive, especially if it shows you’ve had ten jobs in ten years? Unless applying for a high end job I don’t see a resume being longer than one page reasonable. I mean, based on the articles I’ve seen recruiters have a hard time even paying attention to a cover letter or a one page resume.