One-page resume templates

Browse every filter

One page is a length, not a rule

The advice to keep every resume to a single page is US convention flattened into law. It is right for most people up to roughly eight to ten years of experience, and wrong the moment the second page carries substance rather than padding. Academia, nursing, senior technical and most of continental Europe run longer as a matter of course, and a CV is not expected to be short at all.

Where the rule does hold is early career. A graduate resume spread over two pages is nearly always one page of content and one page of formatting, and the reader notices which is which.

How to actually get there

In order: cut the summary if it repeats the bullets under it, cut roles more than about fifteen years old down to a line each, cut skills nobody screens for, and cut every bullet that describes a duty rather than a result. That is usually a third of the page, and none of it was doing any work.

Only then reach for the layout. A compact template, slightly tighter line height and margins pulled in a little will buy you several more lines. What should not happen is a second page rescued by shrinking the type — nine-point text with no air around it is harder to read than any design choice could make it, and reads as someone who could not decide what mattered.

Common questions

Nearby filters