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Sing your praises on more pages

It’s the biggest workplace debate since Coke versus Pepsi in the vending machines — whether to limit your glowing résumé to one page.

For years, soon-to-be college graduates were taught to squeeze everything they learned in their seven-plus years (and, no, they are not all doctors) into one page of text no matter how small that text had to be.

Remember the days of printing out your résumé over and over again to maximize the margins without cutting out a single word? Touting your accomplishments to would-be employers through your résumé is a critical step to getting the next 9-to-5er, and the days of one-page résumés might be going the way of the Christmas bonus.

As younger workers have more jobs, and employers look more closely for evidence of particular skills, many people need a résumé that goes beyond the 46 lines of the Microsoft Word document.

The average employee in his late 20s, for example, has already switched jobs five or six times, which could result in an additional five to six times the experience to list on the ol’ brag sheet.

But are employers ready to look at more than one page?

More executives are willing to review two- and three-page résumés, a recent survey indicates.

Of those polled nationally, 44 percent said they prefer two pages, compared with 25 percent a decade ago, according to the survey by Accountemps, a staffing service for temporary accounting.

More than half, or 52 percent, still sought one-page résumés, down from 73 percent 10 years earlier.

In a not-so-scientific poll of Society for Human Resource Management members in central Iowa, none of them — out of the nine respondents in the e-mail poll — would refuse to read a résumé if it went over one page.

“Overall, candidates should focus on keeping it concise and to the point,” said Paula Hender, spokeswoman for Central Iowa SHRM. “There are many reasons why you would want to keep your résumé to one or two pages, but there are also many reasons why you would want to expand it to three or four pages,” Hender said.

One of those reasons might be to list additional relevant work experience. That means don’t include your Frisbee golf club accomplishments, unless the job you are seeking is selling Frisbees.

While every job requires different skills, Central Iowa SHRM members say résumés should include specific details of job history, professional organizations and your work on major projects or initiatives.

Things not to include: favorite sports teams, marital status, hobbies, personal organizations or people you know in the company.

Another lesson from SHRM: Size does matter — type size, that is.

“How you present your information — even the format — can be just as important as the content,” Hender said.