Engineers, Stop Making Single Page Resumes!
Intro
If you’ve been reading my articles on creating a sales and marketing mindset for going after jobs, which would include writing resumes and cover letters, you would know that the goal of making these documents is to use them as sales and marketing tools for the selling and marketing of multiple products. You would also know that the products you are selling, ultimately, represent your expertise, leadership/management abilities, experiences, etc. If you need to catch up on this philosophy, check out my articles on The Robert Kiyosaki, “Rich Dad Poor Dad,” Sales and Marketing Mindset for Success and The Sales and Marketing Mindset to Job Hunting to get up to speed.
In my article on How to Create Marketable Content for Your Resume, I state that focusing on content creation to capture your audience’s attention is the most important, and easily the hardest, thing you can do in the game of creating a marketable resume designed for success. Once you’ve dedicated the time to generating marketable, attention grabbing content for your resume, you will have a lot more leeway in how you present it, and can really apply mythbusting and stereotype breaking techniques to creating it. Let’s see how you can apply stereotype breaking techniques to busting the myth of the single page resume!
The Myth of the Single Page Resume
The single page resume is definitely a myth. Sure, If you have absolutely no experience, it’s your first job, you’re not really sure what to put on there, etc., then it’s definitely a good idea to try and get as much information on a single page as possible; however, what if you are experienced, you’ve been working on multiple projects, you have a ton of leadership experience, or you just have a lot of captivating information that you need to get across? Are you going to truncate your awesomeness because someone told you that your resume has to be one page? Hell no!
Have you ever seen the resume of a PhD or business executive? Their resumes could be 20 pages long! They don’t do this because they have some sort of “special powers;” instead, they do it because they have so much marketable experience to showcase that it assists in their job application endeavors. In other words, their resumes attract consumers so they can make the sale. I’ve heard the responses of hiring managers looking at the single page resumes of candidates with 20+ years of experience, and it’s not great. In the eye’s of the hiring managers, it was automatically assumed that these candidates must not have been doing much over the course of 20+ years to only have a one page resume.
Sure, it’s great to have a nice, concise, one page document that highlights your core capabilities, but sometimes, one page is not enough. In reality, expanding your document margins to the edges of a full sheet of paper, and filling that one page with a single spaced, sized 8 point font, is likely not only killing the aesthetics of your resume, but it is also likely making it really difficult to read; both being detrimental to your marketing plan. I will always come back to this: you are creating a sales and marketing pitch to a customer that is looking to buy your skills, expertise, experiences, etc. If you don’t like the sales and marketing analogy to making resumes, then think of yourself as the design engineer of your own product. Would you purposely undersize your product because one person says they want it that way? Absolutely not. Based on market research you should have already done, you will find the right balance of size, weight, and power consumption to meet the needs of your core customer base.
What will happen if you allow yourself to go onto a second, third, or more pages? What will likely happen is you will free up your creative palate, allowing for even more creativity for your content creation. As you move onto more pages, let your creativity fly. One of the biggest things you need to consider when it comes to making your resume is legibility. I recommend keeping between a 10 and 12 font size. What I have seen happen many times, as you add pages to your resume, is that your resume can transform into a portfolio that you can showcase during an interview, which is ideal. You can focus your entire interview around your portfolio, leaving you in full control of the interview, if you know the content like the back of your hand. This is actually an ideal solution for individuals who don’t think they have much experience to offer, like students. If you don’t have much work experience, think about filling in your resume with details about projects you are working on. The idea is to generate interest in the most captivating way possible. This leads to inquiry, which then leads to an interview, which hopefully leads to a job offer.
For more resume building tips and tricks, check out my articles in the Mythbusting Techniques for Creating and Using Engineering Resumes section of my website. Also, check out my very own engineering resumes that you can tailor, and start sending to employers immediately.
