I had an NAPM Member who sent me his Resumé to critique. His Resumé was three pages long. I made several recommendations on what he could do to reduce it to two pages maximum. He responded that he had always used a rule of thumb that it was acceptable that one page on a Resumé could contain up to 10 years of information and that his three page Resumé was a result of 10 years of experience per page.

I have to admit, this was the first time I had heard of such a "rule". Would you know if indeed this "rule" has any validity and is it ever acceptable for a Resumé to be longer than two pages?

The short answer is, "No". I admit I deal with three and four page Resumés every day. In fact, I submitted a candidate's three page Resumés in the short list of finalists on a recent Director's level search assignment. The $100k+ position went to a candidate with a two page Resumé. I usually expect people who can write appropriately concise Resumés to interview better, organize their thoughts better, follow instructions better and even work more productively for my clients.

Like you, I frequently counsel individuals on the value of a more concise Resumé. I recognize that, for them, this is a record of their life that we are asking them to minimize, and this is tough. I have had them in tears or even hang up on me when I got too aggressive or insensitive in my critique.

If a three page Resumé denotes 30 years of experience, I am not sure I want to have every review of my Resumé to begin by waving that particular flag in the face of the person reviewing it.

There are exceptions to the two page limit. Positions in academia and in research often require more than two pages to give the necessary information. And for some reason, if a person calls their Resumé a Curriculum Vitae they feel they can make it as long as they want to and everyone will still read it.