The "one-page rule" is the ghost that haunts every job seeker's hard drive. You’ve probably sat there, staring at a 1.25-page document, aggressively shrinking the margins to 0.5 inches or lowering the font size of your contact info to 9pt just to make it fit. It’s stressful. But honestly, the obsession with keeping things to a single sheet of paper is often a relic of a pre-digital age when recruiters literally held physical stacks of paper in their hands.
So, should a resume only be one page?
The short answer is: it depends, but probably not for the reasons you think. If you’re a recent college grad with two internships and a stint at a coffee shop, yes, one page is plenty. If you try to stretch that to two pages, you’re just adding fluff, and recruiters can smell fluff from a mile away. But if you’re a mid-career professional with fifteen years of experience across three different industries, forcing that into one page is like trying to fit an entire Thanksgiving dinner into a lunchbox. You’re going to lose the flavor.
The Myth of the 6-Second Scan
We’ve all heard the statistic from the Ladders Eye-Tracking Study that says recruiters only look at a resume for six or seven seconds before deciding "yes" or "no." People use this as the primary argument for the one-page rule. They think, "If they only look for six seconds, why would I give them two pages?"
That’s a total misunderstanding of how the process actually works.
Recruiters spend six seconds on the initial screen. They are looking for "knock-out" factors—job titles, company names, and dates. If you pass that initial glance, they actually go back and read the damn thing. If you’ve chopped out your most impressive achievements just to hit a page count, you’ve basically sabotaged your chances of surviving the second, more thorough read-through.
When One Page is Actually Mandatory
There are times when you absolutely must stick to one page. No exceptions.
Entry-level roles are the big one. If you have less than five years of experience, a second page usually signals that you don't know how to prioritize information. It suggests you think every class project is as important as a real-world result. You haven't developed the "professional filter" yet.
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Investment banking and top-tier management consulting (think McKinsey, Goldman Sachs, or BCG) are also notoriously strict. In those worlds, a two-page resume for a junior or mid-level associate is often seen as a lack of discipline. It's a test. Can you communicate complex value concisely? If not, they might think you’ll struggle with client decks.
Then there’s the career changer. If you are moving from teaching into software engineering, your ten years of lesson planning aren't as relevant as your recent coding bootcamp and GitHub projects. You should probably trim the old stuff to keep the focus on the new skills, which usually results in a clean, one-page document.
The Two-Page Reality for Mid-Career Pros
For most people reading this, two pages is the sweet spot.
A study by Resumego actually found that recruiters were 2.3 times more likely to prefer two-page resumes over one-page resumes for mid-level and senior roles. Why? Because context matters. If you’re applying for a Project Manager role, a recruiter needs to see the scale of the budgets you managed and the specific methodologies you used. You can't explain a $5 million infrastructure overhaul in a single bullet point.
Don't be afraid of white space. A cramped one-page resume with tiny text is a nightmare to read. A spacious, well-organized two-page resume is a joy.
What About the ATS?
The Applicant Tracking System (ATS) doesn't care about your page count. It’s a database. It cares about keywords, formatting, and data structures. In fact, having a bit more length can sometimes help you with the ATS because it gives you more "real estate" to naturally include relevant keywords.
Don't keyword stuff, obviously. But if the job description mentions "Cross-functional leadership," "Agile Scrum," and "Budget Forecasting," and you have examples of all three, don't delete one just to save space. The ATS wants the data. Give it the data.
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The "Experience" Litmus Test
How do you know if you've earned that second page? Use this simple mental check:
Is every line on page two adding new, unique value that proves I can do this specific job?
If page two is just a list of your hobbies, a high school GPA from 1998, or a list of "References Available Upon Request" (never put that on there, it’s a waste of space), then delete it. If page two contains a list of technical certifications, publications, or a detailed breakdown of a major turnaround you led at your last company, keep it.
A Note on Academic CVs vs. Resumes
Don't confuse a resume with a CV. If you're in academia, medicine, or scientific research, the "rules" go out the window. A CV is a record of your entire professional history. It can be ten pages long. It includes every talk you’ve ever given and every paper you’ve ever co-authored.
But for a corporate job? Even a high-level executive rarely needs more than three pages. Three is the absolute ceiling. If you’re at four pages, you’re writing a memoir, not a marketing document.
Formatting Tricks That Aren't Cheating
If you’re stuck at 1.1 pages and you really want to hit that one-page mark, there are ways to do it without losing content.
First, look at your contact header. Are you using three lines for your address, phone number, and email? Put them all on one line separated by vertical bars (|). That saves two lines immediately.
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Next, check your bullet points. Are there any "widows"? That’s when a sentence ends with just one or two words on a new line. Edit the sentence to be slightly shorter so those two words jump back up to the previous line. You can easily save five or six lines this way throughout the document.
Check your "Skills" section. Instead of a vertical list, use a comma-separated paragraph or a few columns.
But seriously, if you do all that and you're still at a page and a half of high-quality, relevant experience? Just let it be two pages.
Real-World Feedback from the Trenches
I spoke with a recruiter at a Fortune 500 tech company recently. She told me something that stuck: "I never reject someone because their resume is two pages. I reject them because their resume is boring."
The length is a secondary concern. The primary concern is the density of value. If I have to read 500 words to find one thing you actually accomplished, I'm annoyed. If I read 500 words and every sentence makes me want to hire you, I don't care how many pages it takes.
Actionable Steps for Your Resume
Instead of worrying about the "one-page rule," focus on these specific improvements to ensure your length is justified:
- The 10-Year Cutoff: Generally, anything you did more than 10-15 years ago can be drastically condensed. You don't need five bullet points for a job you held in 2008. One line with your title and company is often enough to show the career progression.
- Impact Over Duties: Stop listing your "responsibilities." No one cares what you were supposed to do. They care what you actually did. Use the STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, Result) but keep it punchy. "Increased sales by 20%" is better than "Responsible for managing the sales team."
- Modern Fonts: Use fonts like Calibri, Arial, or Georgia. They are cleaner and often take up less horizontal space than the old-school Times New Roman, allowing for more words per line without looking cluttered.
- PDF is King: Always save as a PDF. Word docs can shift formatting depending on the version the recruiter is using. A one-page masterpiece in your Word 2024 can easily become a messy 1.2-page disaster on someone else's screen.
- Audit Your Bullets: Read every single bullet point. If it doesn't directly relate to a requirement in the job description you're targeting, cut it. Your resume should be a tailored document, not a catch-all history.
The "should a resume only be one page" debate is mostly a distraction. Your goal is to be the solution to a manager's problem. If you can prove you’re that solution in one page, awesome. If it takes two, that’s fine too. Just make sure every word earns its place on the page.
If you're still unsure, try this: Print your resume out. Take a red pen. Cross out every word that doesn't make you sound like a rockstar. Whatever is left is your real resume length. Whether that's one page or two, that's the version you should be sending out.