The Dos And Don’ts of Shortening Your Resume

A short, concise resume is a readable resume. Of course, we want to include as much experience as possible on our resumes, so how do we shorten it while still showcasing our professional endeavors? No worries – behold the dos and don’ts of shortening your resume.

THE DOS

Limit your experience

You’re not in high school any more, so flaunt that on your resume! Delete anything you’ve done before your freshman year of college. It keeps your experience relevant and allows you to better explain and share details about your most recent positions and accomplishments.

Volunteering your volunteer work

As kind and thoughtful as they are, your selfless, altruistic volunteer activities only take up space on your resume. Unless the volunteer work pertains to the position, you need to fill in extra space, or you hold a leadership role in the organization, including it won’t help nor hurt your resume.

Bullet point it up!

There is such a thing as too much indenting. Having a bullet indent that takes up an inch is WAY too big and leads your content to take up more than one line. Keep it short and tiny.

THE DON’TS

Margin shrinkage

Shrinking your margins is a sneaky way to make the most of your page. Top; bottom; left; right – it’s like your page size doubled! While this may have solved your challenge of keeping your resume on one page, if you shrink your margins too small Microsoft Word will force (yes, force) the reader to resize them before printing. What HR person is going to take the time to do that? Delete.

8pt Times New Roman

8pt Times New Roman seems like the solution to the one-page rule, right? If you do that, assume the recipient carries reading glasses. Tiny, condensed, and narrow fonts produce trash can material. If they can’t read it, they’re not going to read it.

Cutting words short

Rule of thumb: only use known (and real) abbreviations. Abbreviations are a great way to save space, but don’t make them up. Using them allows your resume to have an easy, breezy aesthetic as opposed to a jam-packed, wordy mess. But remember; don’t make them up!