When to go to two pages on a resume

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I'm very familiar with the advice to entry level employees to limit their resumes to one page. I've also heard that people with years of experience can get away with two pages or sometimes more. I know that a curriculum vitae is sometimes three or four pages in the academic world.

However, I feel like I'm in a bit of a gray area when it comes to my resume. I don't have many, many years of experience in journalism but I'm also not a rookie journalist. If I were applying for copy editor/page designer positions, I can add experience that even includes non-journalism positions that have bearing on the work.

At what point do you start going to two pages? I've ruthlessly cut everything that happened at college papers from my resume and I'm still near that dreaded two page zone.

 

Sending out resumes a lot lately, it's always done online, so I don't even know how many printed pages my resume is at this point. Pretty sure it's not much more than a page, though.

 

Is there a website that you can direct employers to see more info?

 

I cheat by putting all my work experience, etc. on one page. My references - name, title, how they know me, phone number - go on another page.

Maybe that will help.

That said, don't go overboard on the non-journalism related stuff.

 

I've been told the only time you go to two pages is when you're doing an education-based resume for teaching and school.

I've always kept my resume at one page, fudging the spacing to fit if need be. I don't think there's really a need to go to a second. One way to cut down on some space is instead of listing your references, throw a note on the bottom saying, "References available upon request."

 

If I saw that in entry level resumes, it'd be an automatic turn off to have to go somewhere other than your cover letter/resume/clips package for relevant information about a candidate. If I'm on deadline, don't make me work any harder than I have to.

I'd have to think the same would hold true for people with more experience.

 

I was always told to keep it to one.

 

I do a combination of yours and Mike's suggestions. If I have a line for references, it says "Available upon request" and I have a separate sheet of paper with the information you listed.

And I also don't go overboard with non-journalism experience. However, some of that experience is related to journalism job functions. I was a TA for desktop publishing classes. During that time, I helped one of my professors by grading writing in a class she taught at another school.

What I end up doing is mentioning those in an interview when appropriate.

 

For academic stuff, I've been asked for a more extensive C.V. Otherwise, the resumes I've sent out recently have been one pagers.

 

My resume is done in Scribus (which you've never heard of, but it's the open-source answer to Quark or InDesign). Two non-balanced columns, contact info at upper left, skills and awards at upper right, brief employment history at mid-right (names and dates, nothng tedious explaining job dutes), 3 best references at lower right with an italicized note that "other references are available upon request." Body text is in Garamond type, 10 points; Garamond tends to be bit smaller than other body typefaces so it's a way to get a bit more information in the same space.

So, one page but heavier on design than on overwhelming people with too much information. The rest of it can be detailed face-to-face during the interview process.

 

No helmets?

 

God forbid the executives that run my newspaper see this post.