do not cheat the one-page resume rule by using a tiny font and tiny margins

do not cheat the one-page resume rule by using a tiny font and tiny margins do not cheat the one-page resume rule by using a tiny font and tiny margins If youre early in your career, youve probably heard that your resume should only be one page. And perhaps youve tried to wiggle your way around that rule by using a tiny font and non-existent margins so that you can cram more text into one page.If youre done this, youreviolating the rule in spirit and probably making your resume less effective.(Before I go any further, let me clearly note that if youre at least midway into your career, the one-page resume rule doesnt apply to you. You get a second page at that point. But if youre only a few years out of school, you do indeed need to stick to one page.)Anyway, if youre trying to keep your resume to one page, you cantdo itby shrinking your font to the point that only people with a monocle can read itor by adjusting your margins so thattheres hardly any white space on the top, bottom, an d sides of the page. If you do things like that in an attempt to cheat your way into more space, (a) it will be totally obvious what you are doing, and (b) youll be doing it at the expense of how easy it is for a hiring manager to read.And you really, really want it to be easy for a hiring manager to read. Small, crowded text with no white space is hard to read and even harder to scan, which means that hiring managers eyes are likely to glaze over when they turn to your resume, which is the exact opposite of what you want. (And some hiring managers wont bother to endure the eye strain and will just go on to the next resume in their stack.)Plus, the one-page resume rule for early-career people is there for a reason. Its telling you what the appropriate amount of information for your resume is when youre only a few years out of school the amount that fits on a single page with normal margins. When you try to circumvent that with margin and font shenanigans, you end up looking likesome one who cant or wont edit.There are exceptions to every rule, of course - but far more people thinktheyre the exception to this than who actually are. If your experience is limited, youre better off being brutal about sticking to one page - with reasonable margins and a legible font size.What that means inpractical termsYour margins should be at least one inch on all four sides. You can probablyget away with going down to half an inch on the top and bottom if you absolutely must, but no smaller. Font size depends on the font, but in most cases anything smaller than 11 point risks being tough for some people to read, especially if theyre older. And line spaces are not your enemy.And yes, thatmight mean you have to pare things down. Consider what you really want the hiring manager to know and focus there.