One page or two? Resume length in Canada and the US

The rule that replaced the one-page rule

The one-page rule dates from paper stacks and is no longer absolute in either Canada or the US. The current expectation is proportionality: the resume is as long as its relevant, load-bearing evidence, and no longer. In practice that means one page early in a career and two pages for most experienced professionals.

What reviewers actually punish is not a second page; it is padding anywhere. A padded single page reads as thin. A tight second page reads as depth.

When one page is right

Students, recent graduates, and career changers whose relevant evidence is concentrated should stay on one page. Filling page two with coursework, high school, and hobby lists dilutes the material that matters.

One page is also the right discipline when applying far outside your experience level, where only a subset of your history is relevant.

When two pages are right

Roughly seven or more years of relevant experience, multiple substantial roles, or technical careers with genuinely useful project and skills detail justify two pages. Cutting strong relevant accomplishments to satisfy a page count is the worse trade.

Page one must still carry the decision: summary, current role, and your strongest evidence all above the fold. Assume page two is read only after page one has already succeeded.

• Page one: summary, most relevant roles, strongest accomplishments.
• Page two: earlier roles, education, certifications, secondary skills.
• Never let a role's bullets straddle the page break awkwardly.
• Older roles compress to one or two lines; they establish trajectory, not detail.

Cut by relevance, not by font size

Squeezing margins and dropping to nine-point type to fake a page count helps no one; it strains the reader and signals indecision. Cut content instead: whole bullets, then whole roles from decades past, by relevance to the specific posting.

Templates with fixed, restrained typography make this honest, which is a deliberate constraint of ours: our templates reflow deterministically and keep type sizes readable, so length decisions are content decisions, where they belong.