#lang pollen

◊(define-meta title "résumés")
◊hanging-topic[(topic-from-metas metas)]{Avoid density with a second page}

During law school, I interviewed for a job at a small firm. One of the hiring partner’s first comments was “It’s so unusual that I see a résumé without any typos.”

“Are you serious?” I said.

“Yes,” she said, “probably 90% of the résumés I get have typos. And that includes the ones we get from the top schools.”

I got the job. There were surely better-qualified candidates. But they damaged their chances with sloppy résumés.

This is a book on typography, not typos. But the point is the same — faced with a stack of nearly identical résumés and limited time, readers will make judgments that aren’t based on substance. Whether you think that’s fair is irrelevant. It happens all the time.

The biggest problem I see with résumés is that they’re uncomfortably dense with text. I take this to be the influence of the myth that a résumé can only be one page long. Unless a potential employer demands one page, feel free to make your résumé two pages. This will ease your typographic problems.

◊before-and-after-pdfs["resume"]