> The moment a reader realizes that a résumé is more than say two or three pages, negative impressions flow and the reader becomes less inclined to give the doc

> The moment a reader realizes that a résumé is more than say two or three pages, negative impressions flow and the reader becomes less inclined to give the document their full attention. Translation: "I am unable and unwilling to give something a fair judgement." > Another explanation for multi-page résumés is the common use of CVs outside North America, as CVs are often much longer and more detailed than what US companies expect or desire I wonder if the desires of companies and hiring managers are being conflated. > When CV users in the US start using the more accepted and brief résumé format, the industry will be better off as a whole. Really? Why? Better off how? > CV formats often used by foreign developers are more likely to list minute details of each technical environment. This includes languages, operating systems, IDE’s, frameworks and libraries, app servers, databases, methodologies, and build tools, sometimes complete with version and release numbers. The sheer volume of this data can be quite cumbersome for contractors and consultants who work for several clients in a year, which is the norm for many new arrivals to the US. This information is rarely a major factor in interview assessments, wastes valuable space, and portrays the writer in a negative light due to a perceived inability to prioritize the minimal importance of this information. So the pattern I'm seeing here is that hiring managers don't give a shit about your experience as long as the buzzwords match. We knew this already, but I was expecting a thoughtful essay, not a reiteration of this disguised as a proper argument. Of course version numbers, IDEs, etc is way too much, but a one liner is not enough to describe anything useful. Anyway, I've mostly found that the best way to get hired is to bypass the HR gateway. Go through someone you know, or get introduced. Worst case, introduce yourself: report a bug, submit a pull request to their project, keep offering insightful feedback on their blog. If the team likes you, tough shit. They usually get to overrule anyone. And I've never seen an engineer bitch about having too much information on the resume. It saves me the effort of having to obtain that info during the interview and decide that you weren't a match in the first place. Oops. Final insight to hiring people: If you are getting too many resume spam to wade through, raise the bar. Add a 10 minute code task. Add a secret keyword in the job description body for them to include in their e-mail, to make sure they read it. Hell, add a silly programmer filter like "send your resume to the base64 decoded version of this text: ....". As long as you don't make it too complicated, all of these things are a minor inconvenience to people who genuinely want to work with you. But they are a major inconvenience for resume spammers. ----------------- edit: Another point is that with the current hiring process, your resume has two vastly different audiences. HR people and engineers. As a result of this clash of interests, resumes fall in the awkward middle. By bypassing the HR process, you also have the opportunity to write a resume specifically catered towards engineers. There is always the argument that a resume is a sales pitch, but who are you selling to? I've read tons of one pagers, coming away with nothing conclusive as to whether I should pursue or not. "Worked on implementing payments on an e-commerce site using JSP, JBoss, ..." So what? Were you by yourself or in a team? Did you use preexisting stuff or did you do it from scratch? How big was the site? How did launch go? What kind of process did you guys have? At what stage did you join? Did you lead the project? If you've had more than 3-4 jobs, a page is not enough. I don't want a slick sales pitch, I want as many details as I can get.