How Long Should a Software Engineer Resume Be?

After years of scanning thousands of applications at Google, I can tell you that recruiters don't count the number of pages in your resume. They have a radar for fluff. I started my resume service for tech and software engineer roles to cut through the noise and show hiring managers your impact without getting bothered by generic rules that simply don't apply to real life recruiting senarios.Today, we'll destroy another one of these myths.

So...How long should a software engineer resume be?

You've probably asked yourself this question and haven't received a useful answer. Worse even, one piece of advice seems to be contradicting another... So today let's put this concern to bed and answer the question once and for all.

So, what's the expected length of your CV? Should it be over or less than 1 page? Is 3 pages too long for a resume?

Here's the first thing that I want you to understand: despite what you may have been told by your career counselor or career coach, or what you've read online... There is no "rule" and Recruiters don't care !

The short answer is.... It depends, but it's not that important !

Here's the first thing that I want you to understand: despite what you may have been told by your career counselor or career coach, or what you've read online... There is no absolute "rule" and Recruiters don't care !

But... There is no smoke without fire and if you are getting negative feedback on CV length, it is more about the content than the number of words...

Eh? I know, it sounds confusing, but let me explain.

A resume is judged "too long" when there's too many words for too little substance.

So if you have done very little and write half a page about it, then you're going to make a Recruiter angry because they'll never get the few seconds they spent on your CV. This means that a 2 or 3 page resume full of fluff an buzzwords isn't effective, but so is a 1 page resume in such a case.

Now if in the contrary you write about subjects that Recruiters do care about, it's a whole different story: they'll want more details !

So the first key to write an impactful resume is to understand what does matter (and write a lot about that), as well as what doesn't matter (and cut it. No mercy.)

"I was told Recruiters only 10 seconds on a resume, so a longer resume means they won't read it, right...Right? "

So here's a little secret: Recruiters have a superpower.

They're so used to scanning through resumes (over 100 a day on occasions), that they are extremely good at tagging key pieces of information (when it comes to CVs, they have a better response time than your last Node.js app).

Basically, Recruiters don't review a resume from top to bottom, so the length of a resume barely impacts the times it takes them to review.

Now, as I said above, if that important information is buried inside a sea of ***, then you're making their work harder.

If you're going to remember 1 thing, remember this: It's all about not diluting the good content. If your resume is mostly good stuff, then it's ok for it to be 2 or even 3 pages long, regardless of your seniority.

Here's some more insights for my favorite people (I'm talking about you, with the mechanical keyboard).

The above is especially true for Junior Software Engineers or Computer Scientists in general (that includes Interns and New grads).

Despite what Mrs. Anderson (your career counselor) told you, your resume should probably be more than 1 page long.

This is because of the beautiful field you've chosen: you've most likely worked on projects.
You've built a to-do list (which the world really 😉), worked your way up to a Twitter or Netflix clone, and then started building fancy stuff like Sentiment Analysis models or Inventory Management web apps.

That IS work experience!
That hard labor - despite being done in your underwear - counts because it translates to tangible skills.

And when it comes to Software projects, you don't just want to give an outline.
You need to talk about architectural patterns, libraries and packages used, clever pieces of codes, metrics, etc....
Recruiters also want to know how you tested your app, if and how you deployed it and more.

If you add that Project piece to the most likely work and internship experience and go into a high level of technical details, then your resume will inevitably be over 1 page, and that's ok.

So the "once size fits all" advice of sticking to 1 page might be roughly correct for, let's say, a Junior Marketer, who only has internships to talk about, but you are different.

Despite all of the above, you might still be thinking, "yes, but all the other students in my class have 1 page resumes".

That's amazing news !
Job searching is a competition. You don't need to fit in, you need to stand out !
On top of that, many more experience Devs are unemployed and will compete with you for these Junior roles.

You need all the help you can get.

Rather than words, let me show you 2 job blocks (for the same role, at the same company).

Resume A is what 95% of people do.

Resume B is what you (because you followed my advice 😉) are doing.

Now put yourself in the shoes of a Recruiter, and tell me honestly:

Wich one seems to know their stuff better?

Hopefully this drove the point home, and you now understand that for resume writing, length doesn't matter, but content does.

In summary: length isn't an issue provided that the content is impactful. If you have valuable details to add, you can write a 2 or even 3 pages resume without having to worry !