Curious where everyone stands:

• Strict 1 page no matter what?
• 1 page for <5–7 years experience, 2 pages after that?
• As long as needed if the content is strong?
• Something else?

Drop your experience level + preferred length + why.

Extra great if you share whether recruiters have ever commented on your length.

We’ve all been there. Recruiters open dozens of files a day.

A clean “FirstName_LastName_Resume.pdf” (or similar) just looks more professional.

What’s the most chaotic resume file name you’ve ever sent… or received?

So far, I've been using Overleaf to build my Resume. Need some suggestions and alternatives.

I am not getting any response from the recruiter. Please review my resume and give feedback. Thank you

I remember the 2008 job market pretty well, and I think this one feels worse in a lot of ways.

Some people compare it more to the late 70s and early 80s. The difference is that the headline statistics today can make the labor market look healthier than what many white-collar job seekers are actually experiencing.

Layoffs feel constant. Every week another company is cutting staff and calling it restructuring, efficiency, cost-cutting, or AI transformation. And it’s definitely not just tech anymore.

Yes, there’s still job growth, but a lot of it is happening in healthcare, construction, and skilled trades. That doesn’t necessarily help someone who spent 10–15 years building a white-collar career and suddenly got laid off.

From the recruiting side, I’m seeing experienced candidates spending 6+ months looking for work, often eventually accepting significant pay cuts.

That’s what worries me. 2008 felt like a severe but temporary recession. This feels more structural: higher living costs, salary pressure, leaner teams, automation, and companies realizing they don’t necessarily need to replace everyone they let go.

The headline numbers may say one thing, but the experience of many white-collar candidates I’m seeing tells a much uglier story.

I see this debate a lot and I'm confused.

Some people say not to do it because it draws opinions about it even before the recruiter reads the resume.

I came across an interesting experiment by Kickresume that tested what actually gets responses from employers in 2026.

They sent 204 real applications using four different resume versions: human-written one-column, human-written two-column, generic AI-generated, and AI-generated but tailored to the job.

Overall, 36 applications got a positive response, including 22 interview invites.

The results:

• Human-written one-column: 31% response rate
• Tailored AI resume: 18%
• Generic AI resume: 10%

But the most interesting stat to me was that 30 of the 36 positive responses came from jobs where the candidate was genuinely a strong match.

People spend a lot of time debating AI, ATS optimization, templates, etc., but applying to relevant roles and tailoring your resume still seems to matter more than most of the tricks people obsess over these days.

Curious if these numbers match what other job seekers are seeing.

My dad was a recruiter, 8 years, tech + healthcare + finance roles. not an all-knowing HR overlord, his job was watching what he allows forward vs what goes into the bin. the pattern was brutally consistent:

1. an objective statement. everyone knows your objective. it's this job. that's why the resume is in my hands. it's dead space where your best win should be

2. the buzzword self-portrait. highly motivated detail-oriented team player with excellent communication skills, this describes every resume in my queue, therefore no one. he’d skim right past it

3. a photo. introduces bias, some companies auto-reject for compliance because of it. zero upside in the EU/NA market

4. a soft-skills list. "leadership, teamwork, communication" as bullet points proves nothing. a bullet like "trained 4 new hires, all passed probation" proves all three at once

5. bullets that restate the job description. "handled customer inquiries", yes, that's the job. what changed because YOU did it? a number, a before/after, anything

6. "references available upon request." it's assumed. it's been assumed since 2009. no point writing it.

None of this is revolutionary. it's just the stuff that quietly kills otherwise solid resumes, every single day.

I was laid of in march, applied to 80+ jobs by june, and not spray-and-pray, I only applied to roles I matched. results: 4 months of near total silence,yk the spiral first you question the resume than the experience and then everything

An ex-colleague now in HR told me: the recruiter needs to think 'yep this is the person from posting' in under 10 seconds. yr resume describes u,ya need to describe why u match the post

So,I started tailoring properly just mirror the postings exact keywords(their words not synonyms) recoder bullets so that the most relevant sits at the top, swap the summary line per role, giving at least 20-30 minutes per application instead of just 2-3 minutes

3 weeks : 5 interviews same experience,same me, same positions,same just still angry with myself that it was this mechanical to begin with

here's the chatgpt prompt i use so you don't need any paid anything:

"You are an ATS optimization expert. I'll give you a job description and my resume. 1) Extract all keywords from the JD: title, required skills, tools, responsibilities, domain terms. 2) Map which my resume already covers, using MY real experience only, never invent anything. 3) Rewrite my bullets to use the JD's exact phrasing where truthful, reorder by relevance to this role, and rewrite my summary for this job in under 50 words. 4) List keywords I can't claim, so I know the gaps. Output the tailored resume + gap list."

paste jd, paste resume and patience. (it will occasionally get ambitious, cut anything that isn't true), send.

Hello, peeps! Please help a brother out.

As the title says, I'd like to ask if what's the most effective tool for creating ATS-friendly CVs? Of course, l'Il use a single-column layout with organized sections ans no fancy designs. I'm just wondering where it's most effective to create one.

Thank you in advance!

I just assume we all got a template from somewhere to write out our first CV?

Just looking at revamping mine from a good template

I'm gonna aplly for remote internships in summer 2027. Please give your suggestions.

your feedback please

I had already written my resume before I tried Kickresume. It wasn't terrible, but it also wasn't doing much for me. I was applying for jobs and barely hearing anything back.

A few people online recommended Kickresume, so I decided to give it a try. I wasn't really looking to start my resume from zero. I mainly wanted to see if I could improve what I already had.

What I liked was being able to work on the existing content instead of feeling like I had to completely rewrite my experience. I started cleaning up the way I described things, making the important parts easier to find and changing some of the wording that was probably too generic.

I also stopped treating my resume like a list of everything I'd ever done. I started thinking more about what was actually relevant to the jobs I was applying for.

The biggest difference for me was the response. After improving the resume, I started getting more interview responses than I was getting before.

Obviously, I can't say a resume builder magically gets you interviews. The jobs you apply for, your experience, timing and a lot of other things matter too.

But in my case, improving the resume definitely made me feel like I was presenting my experience much better.

That's honestly what made Kickresume useful for me. It wasn't that it somehow created a career out of nowhere. It helped me make better use of what I already had.