Resume Real Estate

By: Kandice Thorn

If I told you that you have 500 square feet with which to design an apartment that you will live in, how would you design it?  How much space would you allocate to the bedroom versus the living room or the bathroom or the closet?  I imagine you would devote more space to the "more important" rooms and less space to "less important" rooms.  If you have a large shoe collection but don't cook, you might have a big closet and a small kitchen; but a gourmet chef who has little interest in clothing might do the opposite.


With a resume, you have a similarly small space - one page - on which to arrange all of your education and experience.  When organizing your resume, it can help to first identify the things that you think will be of particular importance to an employer, and those that will be least important, so that you allocate space accordingly.  If you worked for three years as an attorney at a law firm, that should take up significantly more space on your resume than a six-month internship you did while you were in school.

I see many resumes where this space allocation is not taken into consideration - everything is given equal weight.  Typically this results in resumes that exceed the one-page maximum that that seem scattered and unfocused.  By allocating space properly, your resume will be more focused, and the most important items/experiences will stand out to an employer.