[rayiner]

Opinions on this subject obviously differ. My take is this: for most people (e.g. outside of academia), a resume isn't a shipping manifest. It's a piece of persuasive writing. The question isn't, "is one page enough to describe everything I've done" but rather "is one page enough to convince some hiring authority that I'm worth calling back?"

My dad does a lot of hiring. He says he spends about a couple of minutes on each resume that crosses his desk (he usually evaluates hundreds for any given position). That amount of time is enough to give one page due consideration, two pages an adequate read, but not to do anything more than skim through a 3+ page resume. Especially a dense one.

I think part of the problem is that a lot of the classic resume guidelines (chronological ordering) are not conducive to building a resume that highlights the relevant parts of someone's experience.

[fecak]

These are good points. Would you rather write a document that is one page and will be viewed carefully, or a 3 page document that will be scanned? It seems a pretty easy decision, but generally screeners will want to spend the same amount of time viewing every resume and are unlikely to give a candidate who provides 6 pages three times the amount of viewing as they would someone who writes 2 pages.