The Masochist's Institute of Technologyanecdotes of an ambitious MIT student

I recently received an email from the Undergraduate Practice Opportunities Program stating that my resume was unsatisfactory and required a revision. I was directed to an online resume workshop to help me with this, and after going through the videos and slides, I was perplexed. My resume fit all of the specifications perfectly, except for one thing…

My resume is two pages long.

Cue gasps and swoons from the masses. “No way!” you gasp. “Resumes are never, ever longer than one page; you have just committed job-search blasphemy!” My only response is to roll my eyes and stick my finger down my throat to gag in mock horror. Here’s radical statement #1, guys:

Resume can be more than one page long.

It is true that sometime, long ago, someone made up the silly rule that resumes can’t be longer than one page. No matter how small you need to make your font, how many relevant experiences you need to omit, or how narrow you need to make your margins, you must never exceed that one page. It’s a terrible rule for several reasons:

1. Some job seekers genuinely have that many experiences that are necessary to document, and it’s unreasonable to ask people to “water down” their relevant experiences just to fit that one page.
2. It forces people to squish all their text together to the point of being unreadable.
3. It forces people to make their margins extremely small (0.25 inches), so that the entire page looks like a wall of text.
4. Any rule that includes the word “never” is by default unreasonable, as it presents some silly ultimatum that does not take into account the situation at hand.

My resume contains the five traditional headings – objective, education, experience, skills, and awards/honors. All items included under these headings are extremely relevant to any job for which I decide to apply. In total, my resume spans two pages, which I print out on the two opposite sides of one sheet of paper. Naturally, I place the most important information on the first page, and the not-so-important (skills, awards/honors) on the second.

You want to know what else? My resume has not failed me yet; even as a mere sophomore, it has landed me:

• A research job at Harvard Business School
• Web design jobs with two Boston-area startups
• Interviews with Unica Corporation, Microsoft, IBM, and Booz Allen Hamilton

Next time you tell me my resume is unsatisfactory, I will direct you to the above points. Let’s not make this nasty, UPOP office.