The short version
- One page under about eight years of experience, two pages under fifteen, three beyond that.
- Cut by relevance, not by age alone: older roles can shrink to a line each.
- Never shrink the font or the margins to fit. Cut words instead.
- Academic CVs and some government applications follow different rules — follow theirs.
The rule
Length should follow experience. The rule our scorer uses is simple: one page for under about eight years of experience, two pages for under fifteen, three beyond that. It counts your years from the dates on your roles, and flags a resume that runs longer than its career.
The reasoning is about readers, not software. Applicant tracking systems do not care how long your resume is. People do: the last page is the one nobody reads, so every line on it is a line that might as well not be there.
What to cut first
- Bullets that do not serve this job. Tailoring is mostly choosing what to leave out.
- Old roles’ detail. A role from fifteen years ago can be one line: title, company, dates.
- Duties. “Responsible for…” bullets describe the job, not your work — cut or rewrite them.
- Filler. Objective statements, “references available on request”, lists of soft skills.
- Repetition. If two bullets prove the same thing, keep the one with the number.
Tricks that backfire
- Shrinking the font. Below about 10 points, a resume becomes a chore to read.
- Shrinking the margins. Wall-to-wall text reads as dense, and some printers clip it.
- Two columns to fit more in. It saves space and costs you the parse — see the ATS formatting rules.
Exceptions
Academic CVs list publications, grants and teaching in full and can run many pages. Some government and federal applications ask for far more detail than a private-sector resume. In both cases, follow the format the employer asks for.
Not sure where yours stands? The free resume checker estimates your page count from your text and compares it with your years of experience.