Whether your career has spanned 10 years or 10 minutes it is important to keep your resume as short and concise as possible. As a rule it should be no longer that 1 or 2 A4 pages length maximum with your most recent and relevant experience highlighted at the top in more detail. It is not supposed to be an account of your entire professional history and your hiring manager does not have the time to read about every aspect of your past experience. We understand how difficult it can be to know 
what information to omit so in order to help you trim your resume here are our best tips.
1. Margins
One of the most important rules about resumes is that white space is your friend, it makes it easier to read, appear less cluttered and more visually attractive. That being said you can play with the margins by making them smaller to allow for more text on the page. As a default they are usually 1 inch wide, but feel free to reduce the margins to 0.75 or even 0.5 inch margins to give more room for the key information you need to include.
2. Make the most of each line
There is a lot of information to fit on your resume including contact information and previous work experience. A useful tip for reducing the length of your resume is to make the most of each line. For example instead of using one line for your phone number and another for your email address, put them both on the same line using ‘Email / Number:’. Also put your job title, company, city and employment period on the same line to maximise on space. Eg:
PBT Group – Head of Marketing (Johannesburg) Oct 2014 – Oct 2015
3. Paragraph settings
The gap between each line and paragraph can be adjusted to make the most of space on the page. Again it is important to remember that white space works to your advantage and should not be totally deleted otherwise your resume will be hard on the eye and difficult to read. It is a fine balance to tread between making your resume attractive and easy to skim for your hiring manger and adjusting the settings to fit as much information as possible on one page.
4. Rambling bullet points
As a rule of thumb no bullet point should be more that two lines long. This is a good way to keep your previous experience descriptions short and concise and away from rambling with unimportant details. Bullet points are designed to be brief and highlight the most relevant information rather than be a long essay. Remember the shorter and more precise your bullets the more impactful.
5. Keep it relevant
While you may have pages and pages of valuable experience remember hiring managers only spare a few seconds to read each resume. Make sure you only include information that is ABSOLUTELY relevant to the job in question. For every word you include ask yourself ‘Is it relevant?’ For example consider your previous work experience how relevant was your summer internship from 20 years ago? This has two benefits; not only will it reduce the length of your resume but it will also make it more concentrated and pack a large punch.