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fogus

General rule of thumb:

Even Steve Jobs' resume is one page, so what makes you think that yours should be 4?

http://homepage.mac.com/steve/Resume.html

(this is an incorrect quote, but I cannot seem to find the original)

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Steve Jobs is also known by name and reputation world wide. Most of us aren't.

I've always been weary of the advice to keep your resume at 1 page. Mine has always been exactly 2 pages. To get it down to 1 page, I suppose I could cut entire items and make me seem more 1-dimensional, or I could make the specifics more general (e.g. remove "increased sales by 23% in 6 months" kind of statements) which makes the resume much less noticable.

I've always just chosen to make it 2 pages. And I've gotten every job I've ever applied for (though this is only in part thanks to the resume of course).

Now this doesn't mean disregard the advice about making your resume 1 page. It just means that there are no hard-coded rules about your resume, interview, etc, that will make or break your chances.

Two pages also works nice for me. And it allows me to let LaTeX do its pretty things. The one-page-rule is not an end in itself, but actually a proxy for quick readability/scannability. The currvita package has a nice, light layout by default, so there's actually not much more in my resume than in most one pagers. But it's easier to read on two pages, than crammed into one.

I was always told in college that hiring managers won't read past the first page. So I don't.

Having a concise resume is an exercise in good communication and editing skills. Give me the most important facts, not every single thing you've ever done.

The rules ares changing for length of resume. In college, yes, it should just be one page, but that's because you most likely don't have any experience. The one page limit works because it makes you focus on the meat of who you are.

However, as you gain experience, then the one pager can become an artificial limiter. As many people have explained above, tailor it to the job you are applying to. But in the hacker community it will be important to show things you work on for fun as opposed to things you do to pay the bills.

My resume is currently 3 pages. First page is what I love to do (projects I am working on and consider important). Page two is how I get paid. Page three is education, skills, references.

I can tell you as a hirer I would most likely not seriously consider your resume. You might think that is unwise, but you clearly don't know what it's like to wade through a pile of crap from people who are obviously just spamming every job opening they can find, trying to find the few people who are actually reasonable candidates, before even trying to figure out which ones might be any good. Even using a recruiter is of limited use -- you can give them criteria, but they often just don't know to tell the difference between a real programmer and someone who has put "programmer" on a piece of paper.

Three pages, with skills on the third page, is roughly as rude as walking into my office and unplugging my computer.

> I was always told in college that hiring managers won't read past the first page. So I don't.

Not that you're wrong to feel the way you do, but this isn't a very good reason. I've been told a lot of things that turned out to be flat out wrong.

When was the last time Steve Jobs tried to find a job?

I agree that resumes should be short, but accepting an arbitrary page limit of 1 is kind of dumb. If you have 2 pages worth of data that genuinely belongs on your resume, send in 2 pages. Most people won't have 2 pages worth of stuff to go on a resume, but don't trim out useful information just to make your resume 1 page if you do.

because he's a toy written by some PR person for the launch of mac.com, and your's must, uh, be used to get you a job?

Of course it's a toy -- it's likely that Steve Jobs does not have a resume at all. The point though is that it's 100% accurate and communicates the whole story. If you are really interested in getting a job, then what makes you think that 4 pages of a resume will help you do that?

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