How to write a résumé for a 30-year career (and ten employers)

The one-page rule exists to force new graduates to stop padding. It was never meant for someone with a real career. Two pages is normal and expected for fifteen-plus years of experience; the reader is not counting pages, they are looking for reasons to keep reading.

What actually loses you the interview is not a second page — it is a first page that reads like a list. Density is the enemy, not length. White space, clear headings, and short bullets beat a wall of text every time.

Recruiters care most about what you have done recently, because it is the best predictor of what you will do next. Give your last two or three roles room: the company, your title, the span, and three to five bullets that lead with an outcome.

Everything older than about fifteen years can collapse into a short "Earlier career" block — title, employer, and years, one line each. You keep the signal that you have been doing this for decades without spending half the page on a job you left in 2004.

A long list of employers reads as instability only if you let it. The fix is to make the trajectory visible. If you were promoted, show the promotion — two titles under one company, sharing a single date range, read as one tenure with a rise in it, not two separate jobs.

Where roles were genuinely separate, group them by the through-line: the industry you know, the function you kept doing, the scope that kept growing. A recruiter who sees "increasing responsibility across operations roles" stops counting jobs and starts seeing a career.

The most common mistake on an experienced résumé is describing duties: "responsible for managing the regional budget." Everyone at your level managed a budget. What did managing it produce? "Cut regional overhead 12% over two years by renegotiating three vendor contracts" is the same fact, told as an outcome.

If you do not have a number, say what changed instead — a process you fixed, a team you built, a problem that stopped happening. Never invent a metric you cannot defend; a fabricated number is the fastest way to lose the room in the interview when they ask about it.

Drop the graduation year from your degree, the objective statement, the full mailing address, and any skill that is now assumed (Microsoft Office, email). None of it helps, and some of it invites the exact bias you do not need on the first pass.

Keep a short, current skills section and recent, relevant training. A certification from this year does more for you than a job title from 1998.