Is a two-page resume bad?

No, not when the second page carries relevant evidence. It is the wrong choice for students and early careers, where it usually means filler. If your second page is mostly older or unrelated roles, cut it back to one.

Does a resume have to be one page for an internship?

Effectively, yes. Recruiters hiring interns expect one page, and almost nobody in school has two pages of evidence that is relevant to one internship. A tight page reads as judgment; a padded second page reads as the opposite.

Can I shrink the font or margins to fit one page?

Only a little. Body text around 10 to 12 points and margins around half an inch or more keep the page readable. Below that, the resume gets harder to scan, which defeats the reason for one page. Cut words instead.

How long should a federal resume be?

Two pages at most for jobs posted under Title 5. Since September 27, 2025, USAJOBS restricts resumes to two pages, and OPM's guidance says an applicant whose only resume runs longer is ineligible for further consideration.

The Arial guide

How long should a resume be? Rules by career stage

One page for students and most early careers, two when a longer record earns it, and what to cut before you add a page.

By Kevin Tang · Updated October 2026

The short answer

One page is the right length for students, new grads, and most people with under about ten years of experience. Two pages is fine once you have a longer record that is relevant to the job, and three is almost never right outside an academic or medical CV. A recruiter's first pass takes seconds, so a page of strong, relevant bullets beats two pages of mixed ones. Before you add a second page, cut old and unrelated roles to a line, trim each recent role to its three to five best bullets, and drop the objective, the references line, and skills nobody asked for. One hard rule: US federal jobs posted under Title 5 now cap resumes at two pages, and a longer one is not considered. Never buy room with a tiny font or thin margins; cut words instead.

Resume length is one of the few resume questions with a fairly settled answer, and most of the arguing online comes from people at different career stages talking past each other. A sophomore and a director should not have the same length resume. So instead of one rule, here is the default, the exceptions, and the cuts to make before you reach for a second page.

The one-page default, and who it is for

If you are a student, a new grad, or have under about ten years of experience, aim for one page. The reason is how resumes get read. In the Ladders eye-tracking study, recruiters spent an average of 7.4 seconds on an initial resume screen. A one-page resume puts your best evidence inside that window. A second page mostly gets read if the first one already did its job. (Ladders eye-tracking study, 2018, press release)

One page is also a forcing function. When you only have room for twelve to fifteen bullets, you have to decide which ones prove you can do the job you are applying for. That decision is most of what makes a resume good. A two-page resume written by someone with three years of experience usually has a strong first page and a second page of duties, coursework, and filler that waters it down.

When two pages is the right call

Two pages earns its place when you have more relevant evidence than one page can hold. That tends to mean ten or more years of experience, a run of senior roles where each one has distinct results, or a technical field where publications, patents, licenses, or clearances are part of the qualification. The test is relevance, not volume: if the second page would still be strong evidence for this specific job, keep it.

There is some research on the other side, and it is worth reading carefully. In a 2018 hiring simulation run by ResumeGo, a resume-writing company, 482 recruiters and hiring professionals screened resumes and picked two-page ones 2.3 times as often as one-page ones. The gap was 1.4 times for entry-level openings and 2.9 times for managerial ones. Reviewers also spent longer on two-page resumes, 4 minutes 5 seconds against 2 minutes 24 seconds. So a longer record, written well, is not punished for its length, but that is a long way from "everyone should write two pages." The advantage shrinks the earlier the career, which is exactly where the one-page default lives. (ResumeGo, one or two page resumes study, 2018)

Resume length by career stage

Where you are	Length	Why
Student or intern	One page	Education, one or two jobs, and a few projects fit easily. Anything more is filler.
New grad, up to about 3 years	One page	Your recent work is the evidence. Older campus roles shrink to a line.
About 3 to 10 years	One page, sometimes two	One page by default. Two only if each recent role has distinct, relevant results.
10 years or more, or senior roles	Two pages	Room for the last decade in depth; earlier roles compress to a line each.
US federal jobs (Title 5)	Two pages at most	A hard cap since September 2025. Longer resumes are not considered.
Academic, research, or medical CV	As long as the record	A CV lists publications, grants, and teaching in full. It is a different document.

Federal jobs now have a hard two-page cap

For years, US federal resumes ran long because the application rewarded detail. That changed in 2025. Starting September 27, 2025, USAJOBS restricts resumes to two pages for jobs posted under Title 5, which covers most federal roles. OPM's guidance to agencies is blunt: reviewers should only look at resumes of two pages or less, and an applicant whose only resume is longer is ineligible for further consideration. Some agencies outside Title 5 can still accept longer resumes if the announcement says so, and roles that require a CV, mostly in medicine and research, handle it separately. If you are applying to a federal job, read the "How to Apply" section of the announcement and treat two pages as a ceiling. (OPM, agency guidance on the two-page limit on resume length, 2025)

What to cut before you add a second page

Most resumes that spill onto a second page do not need more room. They need an edit. Work through these in order, and check the length after each one:

Drop the objective statement. A one-line headline that names your target role does the same job in a quarter of the space.
Delete "References available upon request." Everyone knows.
Cut each recent role to its three to five strongest bullets, and put the most relevant one first.
Shrink roles older than about ten years, and roles unrelated to the target, to a single line each: title, company, dates.
Remove skills nobody would search for, like word processors and email, and skills you could not talk about in an interview.
Rewrite any bullet that runs past two lines. A long bullet usually has a short one hiding inside it.
Remove high school once you are in your second year of college or later.

Formatting tricks that backfire

The tempting shortcut is to keep every word and shrink everything else: a 9 point font, quarter-inch margins, line spacing squeezed until the bullets touch. It technically fits on one page, and it defeats the point of one page. A crammed resume is slower to scan, not faster, and the recruiter's few seconds now go to finding the content instead of reading it. Keep body text around 10 to 12 points, margins around half an inch or more, and enough white space between sections that each heading is easy to find. If it does not fit at those settings, the fix is in the words.

The other trick is moving content into a second column or a sidebar to save vertical space. That can also cost you with applicant tracking systems, which can read columns out of order. A single column is the safer layout at any length.

The right length is the one where every line is doing work for this application. For most people reading this, that is one page. When you have outgrown it, you will know, because cutting starts to remove evidence instead of filler.