One page resume might work for people with not so much experience but it is very hard to put 25+ years of work in one page except obvious "I solve your problems for money" :-).
Just plain listing all places of work with dates can be 20+ lines
How much insight can you get from
1995-1996 Company X , Senior Consultant , project Y ??
As someone who reads a lot of resumes, I regularly see two types of resumes:
1) Those that are roughly 1-2 pages per 10 years of experience with care taken to emphasize relevant and recent experience. Skills and knowledge that I actually care about are placed such that I cannot help but notice them on a first glance. Thought is clearly present in this resume.
2) Those that are roughly 13-21 pages (I have one on my desk that is 17 pages for work experience dating to an internship in 1996). Each job is discussed in mind numbing detail without ever giving me any of the details that I may actually care about. Each job includes an "environment" section that lists every tool that was in the building while that project was going on. Spelling and grammar issues are present. Any skills section will be overloaded with undefined in-house tools and frighteningly basic items (such as a senior developer/architect who lists 11 years of experience with FTP and EMAIL).
When you see an interviewer complaining about resumes that are too long and waste time, understand that they're complaining about the latter. I can easily accept minor issues. It is a huge warning sign when their resume makes me wonder if it is their judgement or motivation that is seriously lacking.
> When you see an interviewer complaining about resumes that are too long and waste time...
No. I'd love to agree with you, but I've seen articles from people just like you (or so they claim) that complain about resumes longer than 1 page. Resumes that include/don't include a cover letter. Resumes that are too short. Resumes that don't cover experiences outside employments. Resumes that do include those experienced.
You see, you mention #2. This guys clearly has a lot of experience. He probably didn't just create that resume just for your job. He's probably been updating a single resume whenever he needs. This means, that resume has gotten him employed at every company on that list.
Think about that.
It's not a problem with people applying, it's with who does the hiring.
While every interviewer has different opinions on what should/should not be present, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm not cargo culting, I'm complaining about receiving garbage.
Extreme length is commonly a sign that the person is too lazy to ever prune or clean up things. And my complaint about excessive length is "if they cannot bother to revisit it, why should I?"
I'm aware that every resume is not created from scratch just for me. Still, I should be able to create a guess as to who the person is, what they're looking for, and (generally) why they might be a good fit. If not, why am I reading their resume at all? What am I possibly getting out of it?
While updating resumes usually means adding, that doesn't have to mean that a 1/2 page discussion on tweaking spreadsheets for a law office in 1992 will stand there until retirement. Do I really need to see that someone has experience with Visual Studio 2010, 2008, 2005, 2003, 2000? How about every version of every Office product that they have ever used?
How about a skills section that lists 4 versions of MS DOS? Sure, there's a possibility we have a legacy system to update, but really, if you want to include that stuff, separate the (likely to be) relevant information so that I can find it easily without wading through crap like your Code Warrior Certification in 1995.
I'm not your mother and I'm not going to do the equivalent of cleaning your room just to find out if you might be worth a phone call.
> I'm not your mother and I'm not going to do the equivalent of cleaning your room just to find out if you might be worth a phone call.
And you shouldn't. But, what you say conflicts, in some way, with your stated goal:
> I should be able to create a guess as to who the person is, what they're looking for, and (generally) why they might be a good fit.
And guess what? That 15-page resume is looking for a place where a 15-page resume will fit in.
My point was that every person who has ever talked about the hiring process and how to put together a resume with the "I read resumes every day" credential is giving you advice on how to get the interview with them: nothing more.
With that in mind, why should I customize my resume for you? Rather, I should write a resume that represents me. If you don't like the resume, you won't interview with me. And that, hopefully, means I wouldn't fit in.
Listen, I've had interviews canceled on me because I play board games (at a company that promotes the fact that they have XBox 360s).
So, I'm not saying you are wrong. I'm just saying that your advice is, at least in my opinion, advice on what you look for. You have no need to defend what your criteria is, I wasn't attacking it. I apologize if you think I was.
In some ways, you should thank the 15-page resumes coming in. They make your decision much easier (I'd assume). If that person adjusted their resume merely to get the interview, are they really the type of person you want to hire?
This. My Aunt was a career counselor for the past several decades. She won't let me use a resume longer than one page.
You don't need to list ever job you've had since your first part-time job flipping burgers during high school. Just try to figure out what they care about and list that prominently. If they want to know more, they'll ask about it. That said, make sure you summarize things in a way that doesn't make it appear that there are large gaps in your resume, though you may still have problems if your most relevant experience was ten jobs ago.
For a tech job, you want to focus on things like what tools you've used, what problems you've solved and any awards or achievements that you can brag about. If you really feel that you can't leave anything out, put a note on there with a link to an online copy of your CV which, unlike a resume, is supposed to list everything. Then watch how many hits it gets to see how little people care.
