I’m working as a manager for a couple of years and one of my duties is to hire new employees from time to time. Up until today, I’m sometimes struggling with the content I get provided from some candidates. Most of the people are writing way too much in a job application because they don’t know how many you have to screen as a hiring person. Therefore I suggest everyone reduce their job application or at least some part of it to one-pagers. One example of this is a one-page resume.
Why adding a one page resume to your job application makes sense!
Besides the fact that nobody really has time to read multiple pages of resumes it just doesn’t make sense. We are living in a world that is fast-paced and quick news and messages are what our brain likes. Therefore a one-page resume brings everything to a simple point:
- The job applicant put in a lot of thought to reduce whatever they have done in their past to one page.
- Their focus is set on important stuff for the new role instead of everything they have ever done.
- A hiring manager can screen quickly what relevant skills or experience the applicant might have.
- The details and experience can be explained in much broader details in an interview which makes communication always easier because you can sell yourself better than on paper.
These four points are crucial to me when it comes to hiring. I would like to learn more about a person in an interview and if I don’t get their whole life history on paper it is even more interesting to meet with that person. Maybe it is because of the IT area I’m working in because something you have done technology-wise 5 or more years ago is not really that relevant. The world in IT is changing so fast that most of that technology is outdated. I would be much more interested in your skills (like the ability to learn) and your personality.
What can a one-page resume look like?
There are a lot of templates available to create a one-page resume for yourself. Some examples can be found on Zety’s blog. I also got inspired by some of the templates and created my own that I also like to share with you.
What’s important to me are the following areas I’d like to know from a potential new hire:
- A short motivational sentence what drives the job application.
- Skills, mainly soft skills that match the position I’m hiring for.
- The last 2-3 jobs including some description what was achieved or done.
- Some things a person has interest in (which should be honest and not just some random profiling)
My example of a one-page resume:
You can get that template as a Word document to fill it directly with your data from the downloads section.
What do you think about one-page resumes? Do you like to get more of those as well or do you prefer the traditional resumes which are multiple pages long?
