It’s playoff basketball right now (not that anybody watches the NBA anymore with its 4 hour games and 3 hours of commercials…)
But, stay with me.
There’s one thing every coach agrees on: The worst shot in basketball is the long two.
You don’t get the benefit of the three. You don’t get the high percentage of a layup.
It’s no-man’s land.
It’s the type of shot that gets you benched. Or makes the whole crowd in the stadium groan.
Here’s the thing:
Candidates looking for jobs are constantly shooting long 2-pointers with their resumes.
Page and a third. Page and a half. Two and a quarter.
Brother if your resume is over a page you use the entire second page.
If, God forbid, you stretch it to 3 pages, use the real estate available. You look like a dummy when you use 2.25 pages and leave 75% of the last page blank like someone forgot to re-fill the ink cartridge.
You didn’t commit to being concise. You didn’t commit to being thorough. Just wrote until you ran out of things to say and hit save.
And you think the hiring manager doesn’t feel that?
They do.
They can’t always tell you WHY it feels weak.
But that page and a third hits their desk and something in the back of their brain says “this person doesn’t get it.”
— “Leveraged cross-functional synergies.”
— “Results-oriented professional.”
— “Dynamic self-starter.”
The career equivalent of dribbling around like a chicken with your head cut off and chucking up a long fadeaway too as the crowd groans.
The best resumes I’ve seen across 10,000+ interviews:
One page. Clean. Every line earns its spot.
Or two pages because they’ve genuinely done enough to fill both.
One page or two.
Commit.
The long two is a lousy shot no matter which way you spin it.
It doesn’t help people get hired either.
One page is the way.
If you want to know exactly what goes on that one page — the structure that’s gotten me offered every job I’ve ever interviewed for, and the same formula I teach candidates across 35 countries — it’s in Chapter 3 of 10,000 Interviews.
Stop shooting long twos.