Is it Possible to Fit All Your Qualifications Into Two Pages? was originally published on Ivy Exec.

You’ve had a long career but need a short resume—it’s the ultimate Catch-22. 

Keeping your resume to one page can be a serious struggle—even with narrowing the margins of your document, decreasing the size of your font, or tightening the spaces between lines. There are many tricks you can use to squeeze more onto a single page, but the reality is that if you have a lot of experiences to share, they’re not all going to fit.

The one-pager resume is arguably a thing of the past. A 2018 study found that recruiters are 2.3 times as likely to accept and prefer two-page resumes over one-page ones. The study of 482 professionals—recruiters, hiring managers, human resource professionals, and C-suite executives with resume-reading experience—were put through a hiring simulation tasked with screening resumes for various job positions. They overwhelmingly leaned toward two-page resumes. 

Lest you assumed this was only the case for mid- to managerial-level jobs (2.6 and 2.9 times as likely, respectively), they were still 1.4 times as likely to prefer two-page resumes over one-page resumes for entry-level job openings. 

But what if your experiences still don’t fit on two pages? Can your resume be even longer?

As a general rule, your resume should be two pages maximum. Here’s why. 

Why Resumes Shouldn’t Be Longer Than Two Pages

Here are three top reasons why your resume really shouldn’t be more than two pages—and why it likely doesn’t have to be, either. 

Long resumes take too much time to read.

The chances are, your resume is in a pile of tens, hundreds, or even thousands of others. Whoever is going through that stack of resumes doesn’t have time to read through a novel. They’re likely scanning them for the most fitting few—and only then taking a deeper dive. 

They may skip it altogether if your resume is too long (like three or more pages). Too much information in your resume may also bury the lead—the good stuff. You want the hiring manager or recruiter to see the highlights, but if those are hidden amid a whole bunch of clutter, it’s challenging to ensure they’ll notice the significant bits.

You probably don’t need everything in a resume longer than two pages.

If your resume is longer than two pages, look at the experiences you have listed. Your resume doesn’t need to have every single job experience you’ve ever had. Instead, it should stick to the relevant job experiences. 

Experiences in other industries, with no ostensibly overlapping skills, can likely be removed. If you’re applying for an executive-level position, you can probably eliminate your previous entry-level jobs. And you can ditch the internships from years ago. 

A very long resume is probably packed with unnecessary words.

If your resume drags on for longer than two pages, it might be worth asking someone to look at it. Having a second pair of eyes can be helpful when staring at your work for too long. Someone with a fresh perspective might be able to share areas where they think you can trim some fluff or get to the point faster. 

There are also plenty of online resources to which you can turn to cut down on excess verbiage. For example, Outwrite and Wordtune are online tools for paraphrasing or simplifying sentences to reduce wordiness. 

Other ways to cut down on wordiness are by turning sentences into condensed bullet points, using symbols instead of words (i.e., % over percent and $ over dollars), and deleting filler words. For example, instead of saying, “I was able to save the company a million dollars,” you instead write it like “saved $1m.” 

Creating a resume that’ll catch the coveted attention of recruiters and hiring managers takes time. And, sometimes, it ironically takes even longer to shorten a resume than it does to write a several-page one.

When in doubt, Ivy Exec is here with a wealth of resources, from how to make a good resume great to top tips for an executive-level resume and more.