When is it ok to have more than a one page resume? Forum

[minnbills]

Thoughts? I've reached a point where I can't fit the legal jobs I've held onto one page.

[Dr. Review]

I usually think of it this way. If a man who is running for president (and subsequently wins) can fit his resume on 2 pages, I can fit mine on 1.

http://cdn.theladders.net/static/pdf/Se ... Resume.pdf

[theotherone823]

It's better to have it on 2+ pages if necessary than to try to cram everything on one page (white space is your friend - it's aesthetically pleasing), but you should expect that the person reading it is only going to look at the first page. Find a way to get the most important information up front on the first page.

[chingwoo]

Can't you target your resume to the specific legal job you are applying for? Or is it all in the same sub-field?

[Foghornleghorn]

It's not uncommon to submit a one page resume and a one page deal sheet.

[DCNTUA]

Never

[swampman]

It's better to have it on 2+ pages if necessary than to try to cram everything on one page (white space is your friend - it's aesthetically pleasing), but you should expect that the person reading it is only going to look at the first page. Find a way to get the most important information up front on the first page.

Or just leave off the less important information and keep it at one page? A resume isn't supposed to be a list of everything you've ever done, and having 6 legal jobs on your resume isn't going to impress someone more than having only the three most recent/impressive/relevant jobs.

[shump92]

Never

+1

Find somewhere you can cut down.

[minnbills]

Thanks for the replies.

My feeling was to stick with one page anyways. Wanted to see if it was common to expand after law school first though.

Someone asked me to take a look at his resume a couple years ago (he's had a very successful career in advertising). The thing was 30 pages long and riddled with typos. I was shocked. He didn't want to change it at all. He got hired a couple weeks later to run a university's marketing dept. Different businesses I guess.

[Dr. Review]

Thanks for the replies.

My feeling was to stick with one page anyways. Wanted to see if it was common to expand after law school first though.

Someone asked me to take a look at his resume a couple years ago (he's had a very successful career in advertising). The thing was 30 pages long and riddled with typos. I was shocked. He didn't want to change it at all. He got hired a couple weeks later to run a university's marketing dept. Different businesses I guess.

A 30-page document isn't a resume, it's a CV.

[A. Nony Mouse]

And university positions commonly ask for CVs, even for non-faculty positions.

I don't think a 2-page resume is unforgivable, but it's obviously something people feel strongly about (and I think government may err a little on the side of wordy?- firms may have less patience for more than a page). I used a 2 pager when applying for stuff in/out of law school (and never ran into problems), but I think now I'd strip out detail from student internships and just list them by title, omit more than a 1-line reference to pre-LS stuff, and just focus on my post-grad jobs, which would fit on 1 page better. So I'm actually reducing mine post law school.

[minnbills]

No it wasn't a CV. He had this resume going back a while, from when he was in corporate. (It was my dad)

[A. Nony Mouse]

He may not have called it that, but in practice anything that lists everything you've ever done is a CV.

[jbagelboy]

the line between "CV" and "resume" becomes blurred for academics. that's where 2 pages as a 'resume' becomes more acceptable. For law firm/business purposes, I'd say one page until you're applying for more senior level positions.

[abl]

Never

+1

Find somewhere you can cut down.

I disagree. The answer is that you can go on to a second page when you legitimately have that much impressive/relevant experience. The reality of it is that even if you think you do, you almost certainly do not have two page's worth of resume items. So although "never" is incorrect, it is for all practical purposes the advice that the vast majority of folks should follow.

I've seen dozens of two-page resumes. Only a small handful actually needed to go on to two pages. But if you're a HYS type who has done 1-2 very impressive things before law school, has a separate graduate degree, has filled your law school summers with one or more impressive experiences in each summer, has done a couple impressive things in law school (think law review / moot court board), has clerked once or twice, and has published once or twice, well, two pages may well be merited.*

*I really can't emphasize enough that you probably aren't this guy. Everyone thinks they have a super impressive slate of resume lines, but few have enough impressive items to fill two pages. If just about every line in your resume wouldn't be impressive in a SCOTUS clerkship application, you can condense. And no, nothing associated with your fraternity would be impressive in a SCOTUS clerkship application.

[DCNTUA]

"Never" is still the correct answer

[jbagelboy]

Never

+1

Find somewhere you can cut down.

I disagree. The answer is that you can go on to a second page when you legitimately have that much impressive/relevant experience. The reality of it is that even if you think you do, you almost certainly do not have two page's worth of resume items. So although "never" is incorrect, it is for all practical purposes the advice that the vast majority of folks should follow.

I've seen dozens of two-page resumes. Only a small handful actually needed to go on to two pages. But if you're a HYS type who has done 1-2 very impressive things before law school, has a separate graduate degree, has filled your law school summers with one or more impressive experiences in each summer, has done a couple impressive things in law school (think law review / moot court board), has clerked once or twice, and has published once or twice, well, two pages may well be merited.*

*I really can't emphasize enough that you probably aren't this guy. Everyone thinks they have a super impressive slate of resume lines, but few have enough impressive items to fill two pages. If just about every line in your resume wouldn't be impressive in a SCOTUS clerkship application, you can condense. And no, nothing associated with your fraternity would be impressive in a SCOTUS clerkship application.

You're almost always right but sometimes you're a little tone deaf man. So a tiny, tiny number of souls -- maybe less than 300 young lawyers -- can have two page resumes (also, lol at all 'HYS' 'types' having SCOTUS level profiles, not that you were implying that). That's the exception that proves the rule, not a point worth "disagreeing" with. Those are the people who can always ignore the conventions that apply to everyone else. But I don't know if you realize how much of a twat you sound like sometimes correcting people on here with negligible carve-outs that pertain to your experience but hardly anyone else's. You know coming in here that a thread like this is not designed for that audience.

[abl]

Never

+1

Find somewhere you can cut down.

I disagree. The answer is that you can go on to a second page when you legitimately have that much impressive/relevant experience. The reality of it is that even if you think you do, you almost certainly do not have two page's worth of resume items. So although "never" is incorrect, it is for all practical purposes the advice that the vast majority of folks should follow.

I've seen dozens of two-page resumes. Only a small handful actually needed to go on to two pages. But if you're a HYS type who has done 1-2 very impressive things before law school, has a separate graduate degree, has filled your law school summers with one or more impressive experiences in each summer, has done a couple impressive things in law school (think law review / moot court board), has clerked once or twice, and has published once or twice, well, two pages may well be merited.*

*I really can't emphasize enough that you probably aren't this guy. Everyone thinks they have a super impressive slate of resume lines, but few have enough impressive items to fill two pages. If just about every line in your resume wouldn't be impressive in a SCOTUS clerkship application, you can condense. And no, nothing associated with your fraternity would be impressive in a SCOTUS clerkship application.

You're almost always right but sometimes you're a little tone deaf man. So a tiny, tiny number of souls -- maybe less than 300 young lawyers -- can have two page resumes (also, lol at all 'HYS' 'types' having SCOTUS level profiles, not that you were implying that). That's the exception that proves the rule, not a point worth "disagreeing" with. Those are the people who can always ignore the conventions that apply to everyone else. But I don't know if you realize how much of a twat you sound like sometimes correcting people on here with negligible carve-outs that pertain to your experience but hardly anyone else's. You know coming in here that a thread like this is not designed for that audience.

I don't know, man. I don't think I was answering a question that wasn't asked here: the OP wanted to know when it was ok to have a >1 page resume. The answer is almost never, which is not the same thing as absolutely never--which is what one would conclude from reading this thread. I think you'd be surprised by the range of people who read and follow advice like this, and how unsure many of these folks are about which conventions apply to them and which don't. I think my post was pretty clear about exactly how limited the exception was that I was articulating, and I do think it's valuable to get things right on TLS, even if the way in which TLS is wrong only impacts a small percentage of folks.

(And no, I didn't mean to imply that all or most or many HYS types have SCOTUS-level profiles.)

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