Why Some Universities Are Eliminating the Two-Page Resume
Career services advice has changed substantially. The one-page resume convention has been giving way to longer formats, with mixed implications for early-career applicants.
Historically, resumes in the United States were restricted to a single page, which led to some terrible combinations of omission and white space on the part of career services offices to enable students with quality experience to express it. That is no longer the case, as by 2026 a review of 22 university’s career services of 2025 found that more than half recommend two-page resumes for students with enough experience to fill two pages and several recommend the industry’s standard instead of a single-page resume as typical for their field.
The Origin of the One-Page Convention
This convention had roots in a bygone era when physical resumes were stacked up and read by hiring managers one after another. Even as physical resumes gave way to digital documents that would be read in entirely different ways by hiring managers, however, the time-economy argument persisted. (Indeed, it remains a stock argument in favor of the one-page resume today, though applicant tracking systems have long since made reading a resume to begin with a matter of seconds.)
What Has Changed
Changes to resume advice, however, have led to the abandonment of the one-page resume in favor of more experience-appropriate versions. For example, the applicant tracking systems (ATSs) used by employers to sift through large volumes of resumes to find potential candidates to bring in for interviews have long been cited as a reason to keep resumes to a single page of text in order to keep down the time it takes for a recruiter to read through all of the resumes submitted for a job opening. In reality, however, the vast majority of resumes are now submitted and reviewed digitally, which greatly reduces the relevance of this reason for keeping a resume to a single page. Additionally, many students entering the workforce for the first time have already completed substantial amounts of experience, such as internships, as well as academic work, which can be very difficult to include on a resume of only one page. The end result is that the number of industries that expect to see resumes of varying lengths has greatly increased, so that career services advise students to expect to have to write more than one resume, and that the length of a resume will depend on the industry for which the student is applying.
The Industry Variation
Industry-specific formats are more commonly recommended. While technology applicants can typically get away with a longer resume that may include links to an online portfolio or descriptions of finished projects, for example, consultants are generally expected to keep their resumes to a few pages and include details about specific accomplishments, while applicants for academic and research positions are expected to create resumes that are more akin to a CV and include all relevant information and experience.
The Compression Cost
The biggest drawback to the one-page resume convention (known as the “singe-page trap” in the resume writing world) is the “compression cost” or the negative impact that the shortened version of your resume can have on your job search. Just because you have written a great resume in a very condensed format does not mean that it is going to generate the same number of interviews as a more complete resume. I have been there twice and can confidently tell you that in both cases, it was the “boring” option that saved me from far worse outcomes.
What Universities Now Recommend
Most of the Career Services offices have shifted their advice to an industry-specific basis. That is, they recommend that students learn how resumes are typically formatted in certain industries (e.g. tech, consulting, academia) and write resumes in formats that are typical for those fields. That is the opposite of the single template approach typically given in career advice.
The Quality-Over-Length Principle
More recently, many Career Services offices have changed their stance on resume length, from advocating that students create one-page resumes to teaching them that the most important thing is to write a high-quality resume of any length. A two-page resume with good content is much better than a one-page resume with poor content that has been condensed to the point of obscurity. And a one-page resume with good content is better than a two-page resume with weak content that has been padded out to fill up space.
The ATS Question
Modern computer programs have been added to many companies’ HR departments to help sort through applications. These systems read text in resumes and cover letters and look for words and phrases that match a job description. Because these systems read only text and do not look at the visual layout of a resume, there are some formats that appear to be good for human readers but are not good for these systems. As a result, some career services offices are now teaching students how to write resumes in formats that are also compatible with these systems as well as how to write good traditional resumes.
What Students Should Do
For students preparing resumes, the research suggests several practical conclusions. Research format conventions in target industries rather than following universal templates. Prioritize substantive content over length restrictions. Use ATS-compatible formatting for digital submissions. Maintain multiple resume versions for different application contexts.
It is the way I am going after getting very poor results from following all the advice from my last attempt.
The Broader Implication
The one-page resume convention is a relic of a bygone era and one of the many areas in which the preparation that students receive as to how to get a job has not kept pace with actual practice. The small amount of time needed to bring oneself up to speed on the latest practice for resume preparation is well worth the effort in the face of the conventional advice that has been around since one’s parents were in college and which has only served to weaken applicants’ resumes in competitive job markets.
The Recruiter Time Question
In terms of design, however, the most critical factor to keep in mind when developing a resume is the amount of time that any given recruiter will spend looking at it. In reality, most look at a resume for less than 30 seconds when first reviewing applications for available positions. Therefore, a very critical factor to consider when planning the design and the information to be included in any given resume is to ensure that the information that best describes a candidate’s skills, abilities, and experiences are included near the top of the resume. Simply put, the most important information in any resume must be positioned near the top of the first page in order to give the reviewer the best possible impression within the first third of the resume. The length of the resume is secondary to the information that is strategically positioned near the top in order to grab the reader’s attention.
The Online Profile Coordination
I could describe here a multitude of different channels through which candidates can be discovered today during a career search: print Resume, Online Professional Profile (e.g. LinkedIn), a Portfolio or even even a simple Personal Web Page. Regardless of the mix of channels you choose to use for your own career search it is vitally important that you make sure that you have coordinated them all so that a recruiter has as little “friction” as possible when he or she decides to investigate you from multiple angles on the Web. (e.g. that your Resume lists the appropriate URL for your LinkedIn Profile). The opposite of what I describe above would be to treat each of the different channels as if they were entirely independent of the other(s) which would make your application far more difficult for any single recruiter to evaluate in a few moments of time.
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