7 Tips for an Effective One Page Resume

7 Tips for an Effective One Page Resume 7 Tips for an Effective One Page Resume You have more than a decade’s worth of experience, yet you are being asked to make a one-page resume. Writing an effective one-page resume is possible, so we offer 7 tips on how to achieve the best one-page resume. The best resume length advice will always help a recruiter, hiring manager, or employer read your resume in six-seconds. 1. Stick to the “quantitative” results It is no secret that the right keywordswill help get your resume seen. Companies know job candidates do this. They do not care so much about “what you claim to do”. They care if you know “how to do it”. Quantitative results show evidence that you can execute. An effective one-page resume shows numbers that prove your qualifications, thus making your resume shorter. As one hiring manager explained to me: “We need to know you can walk the walk, not just talk the talk.” 2. Leave out irrelevant experience Your LinkedIn resume and CV is the place for your career “autobiography”. An effective one-page resume sticks to relevant experience. If you are applying for a position as a Technical Project Manager, for example, some resume length advice would be to leave off all the side jobs you took while job searching. This means you may have several “best one page resumes”, one for each job title you can be hired for. 3. Leave out irrelevant education A one-page resume is easier to achieve if you leave out the irrelevant education. Your high school education is almost always irrelevant on any job application unless you are just starting your career. Even then, they only want to know that you completed high school. 4. Using smaller font sizes Warning: This does not mean the best one-page resume needs to be seen under a microscope. An effective one-page resume can happen with a font size of 10 or 11. Going lower than that can leave the hiring manager squinting and reaching for their glasses. A one-page resume is intended to save time and make for easier reading. A tiny font may fit more, but then it is more difficult to read. 5. Get all your contact information on one line An effective one-page resume has all the contact information on the top line. In the past, it was common to make your name look like a theater marquis. But that was before short attention spans, online job applications, and attaching files to emails in which your name appears several times. Having all the info on the top line also makes it much simpler to find. 6. Keep all job descriptions to a bullet-pointed, one line of spacing You may have had a complex job in the past but that does not mean your description of a skill should be more than one line. Your resume length advice here would be to cut down the number of words used to describe a task or skill. Make sure it fits on one line per task or skill. For example: “Led testing and development plan for next-generation Automated Driving Technologies.” There is a whole story behind that one line. The best one-page resume will almost offer a teaser to get an interview, in which the job candidate can expand on the full story of experience. 7. Kill the objectives or other useless lines Career objectives on resumes lost their meaning as companies realized the employee should focus more on the candidate’s ability to help with a company’s objective. An effective one-page resume will have no objectives and no lines stating “references available upon request” or “salary negotiable”. Note: Summaries have not lost their meaning. There is a big difference between summaries and objectives. Above all, an effective one-page resume is all about “impact”; those times in your career that you achieved productive results and what you did to get such results!