But for few exceptions, almost all schools require one-page resume. No more. And if you’ve worked for 5+ years, you usually struggle with fitting all your bullet points in one page.
Here are 11 ways you can squeeze out more space for accommodating those difficult-to-discard, overflowing bullet points. But if a school has an overriding requirement such as use of particular font type & size or page margins, then that takes precedence over anything mentioned hereinafter.
(Note: Admission policies of schools and guidelines for standardized tests can change. Refer to their website for the most updated information.)
1. You may do away with any material that lists only general or high-level responsibilities or too much of functional skills for a given role. Include the ones where you had solid results (“increased sales by 200 %”) or great context (“met senior executives of several investee companies as part of investment due-diligence”).
2. You may drop unnecessary details about the client, your organization, or deal. For example, some applicants devote space just below their designation to describe what her/ his organization does, which may not be required if your organization is fairly well known. Yale SOM emphasizes this point:
It’s a good idea to include a parenthetical description next to a company’s name if it is less well-known [emphasis added].
3. You may drop the line on your GMAT/ GRE score. Why would you mention your test score in resume when it is separately reported to schools, and it’s at the top of any school’s mind?
4. Leave out details from your high-school days. Admission committees are more interested in knowing about your recent experiences.
5. Is your contact information taking too much space?
Better would be:
John Smith
ABC Street, Unknown Town, U.S. 12345| 862-537-xxxx| [email protected]
You need not stand your name out so much; a smaller font is good too.
6. Are your page margins set at 1” or 1.25”? If yes, try 0.4” top, 0.5” bottom, and 0.8” left and right margins.
7. Is the font size (both, paragraphs and headings) in your resume too large? Normally, font sizes of 10 on Calibri and 11 on Times New Roman are fine for resumes, with the headings 2-3 size bigger. If you are using some other font type, take a print and see if the font size used is of size similar to above mentioned on Calibri and Times New Roman. In case, the content is just spilling beyond one page you may even try reducing the font size by 0.5 (how often we reduce by fraction?).
8. Is line spacing too large? Even though it seems cramped, single-line spacing is commonly used in resumes.
9. Have you introduced space (or, hit enter) between sections? If yes, delete it, put your cursor at the beginning of line, go to Paragraph menu and insert a 6pt space before or after the line.
10. Reword sentences and get rid of those last lines (of bullet points) which have just one or two words. For example:
Paramount Consulting is a boutique management consulting firm specializing in the healthcare sector in South East Asia.
Paramount Consulting is a boutique management consulting firm specializing in healthcare in South East Asia.
Here, the first bullet point has been reworded to save one line.
11. Eliminating redundant sections such as Profile. Anything beyond the three standard sections (Education, Professional Experience, and Additional Information) is a waste of space. An example (details changed):
