Here at AALE we’ve got a new blogger writing for us . “HK Legal Recruiter”? who, it’ll surprise you to learn will be writing on all things HK & China legal recruiting..
?
Here’s the first installment
?
How long should your resume be?
By: HK Legal Recruiter
I am a HK based legal recruiter and will occasionally be contributing posts to this blog about recruitment and the legal industry in general.
As Chinese New Year is now behind us, the busiest period of the year for recruitment is about to commence. As such, I thought I would write some helpful posts for all you potential job seekers out there.
So let?s start with your resume. How long should it be? The simple answer is it depends on your experience. While that may seem like an obvious statement, a lot of resumes I read could definitely be improved by simply increasing or decreasing the amount of content in them.
A lot of candidates, and in particular those from the States, try to limit their resumes to just one page. I suspect the logic here is that hiring managers don?t have the time or inclination to search multiple pages for the relevant information. However, in reality, it?s much easier to skim two or three pages of well laid out information than it is to try and pick out the key points from a solid wall of text.
Next time you are trying to fit your resume onto one page by decreasing your font size, reducing margins, shrinking the spaces between paragraphs or cutting out relevant content ? stop! Instead, just move onto the next page and concentrate on making the content easily readable.
On the other hand, of course, resumes can be too long. There is no magic number of pages that a resume should be but I can safely say that if you hit double figures ? your resume needs some serious editing. Four pages might be appropriate for a senior lawyer with lots of experience, whereas a one page resume could be perfect for a more junior candidate. Remember that the goal is to make your key selling points stand out, not to fit a square resume into a round template.
The use of appendices for legal resumes is a great tip and will be covered in my next post which will look at content. I will also comment on tailoring your resume to the target audience before moving on to how best to work with recruiters and other useful job hunting tips.
?
?
