1. Cut the oldest jobs
Anything over 15 years old usually doesn't belong. Either drop it entirely or compress to a single 'Earlier experience' line.
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2. Trim bullets to the strongest 3 per role
Most older roles only need 2–3 bullets. Keep the most impressive, recent, and relevant accomplishments.
3. Use a tighter layout
Switch to a 10–10.5pt body font, narrow your margins to 0.5–0.7 inches, and use single-line spacing between bullets.
4. Drop redundant sections
- References on request — assumed, remove it
- Hobbies — only keep if directly relevant
- Address — city + state is enough
- Objective statement — replace with a summary
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Senior candidates resist the one-page resume for the same reason senior writers resist editing: it feels like you're losing the work. You're not. A one-page resume is a forcing function that pushes you to lead with what's strongest and discard what's merely true.
The right way to compress 10 or 15 years of experience is not to shrink the font until everything fits. It's to ask a sharper question of every line: does this bullet help me get the next interview, or am I keeping it because I'm proud of it? Pride is not a selection criterion. Relevance is.
Older roles get compressed, not deleted. Two senior roles from your last decade deserve 4–6 quantified bullets each. A role from 12 years ago deserves one line that names the company, title, dates, and a single highlight. Everything before that collapses into one Earlier experience row.
Layout discipline buys you the last 15% of space. A 10.5pt body font, 0.6-inch margins, and tight line height — combined with a single-column structure — fit substantially more text without crowding the page. If you still cannot fit, the problem is content, not layout.
Frequently asked questions
- Is a two-page resume ever acceptable?
- Yes, for executive, academic, and federal roles, or when you have 15+ years of directly relevant experience. For most other situations, one page outperforms two.
- What font size is too small for a resume?
- Body text below 10pt becomes hard to scan and can trigger ATS parsing issues. Stay between 10 and 11pt for body text and 12–14pt for section headings.
- Can I link to a longer CV from a one-page resume?
- Yes. A short URL to your LinkedIn profile or a personal site with extended case studies lets you respect the one-page rule while making more material available to interested readers.
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