Federal resume vs private resume: what to cut to fit 2 pages

The differences that remain

Rows marked (OPM) restate: U.S. Office of Personnel Management, Workforce Policy and Innovation, "Applicant Guidance on the Two-Page Resume Limit", https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/hiring-information/merit-hiring-plan-resources/applicant-guidance-on-the-two-page-resume-limit/ (one-page PDF, accessed 2026-10-02). The private-sector column and the last row describe common practice and are our own summary.

What you cannot cut

These lines look like clutter when space is short. OPM's guidance asks for each of them, so they stay:

• Job title and employer for each relevant job.
• Month and year for the start and end of each job.
• Hours worked per week for each job.
• Series and grade for every federal position.
• A description that covers each required qualification in the announcement.
• Your name, email address and phone number.

Source: OPM, "Applicant Guidance on the Two-Page Resume Limit" (URL above, accessed 2026-10-02).

What to cut, in order

OPM's hints for a two-page resume include "Prioritize most relevant and recent experience" and "Remove outdated or unrelated experience" (same source). The six passes below are our way of applying those hints. Work through them in order and stop when the PDF is two pages.

Pass 1. Jobs that do not match the announcement

• Mark every line that supports a requirement in the announcement. Everything unmarked is a candidate for deletion.
• Keep in full the one or two jobs that prove the experience the announcement requires.
• Reduce older or unrelated jobs to one line each (title, employer, dates, hours per week), or remove them.

Pass 2. Private-resume habits that take space

• Objective statements and "references available upon request".
• Photos, hobbies and a full street address.
• Adjectives with no proof: "dynamic", "results-driven", "detail-oriented".
• Long skills lists that repeat what the bullets already show.
• Company jargon, product code names and acronyms the announcement does not use.
• Awards that do not match a requirement. If an award proves one, write a bullet about the work instead.

Pass 3. Old federal-resume habits that take space

• Every duty of every job. Keep the duties the announcement asks about.
• Paragraph-style duty descriptions. Use bullets of one to two lines.
• Duplicate bullets: when two jobs show the same skill, keep the more recent or larger example.
• Long narrative statements pasted into the resume.

Pass 4. Words inside each bullet

• "In order to" becomes "to". "Was responsible for managing" becomes "managed".
• "A total of" and "successfully" can go.
• Write numbers as digits: 14 sites, $8.4M, 37%.
• Merge two weak bullets on the same requirement into one. See how to write a specialized-experience bullet.
• If one or two words sit alone on a last line, rephrase until the line closes.

Pass 5. Word budget

Our estimate is that about 900 to 1,000 words fit on two legible pages. One way to split them:

If you are over, cut from older jobs first, then skills, then the summary. Protect the bullets in your qualifying job.

Pass 6. Layout

OPM's guidance limits the page count. It does not prescribe a font or margin. Ranges that stay readable, as our advice: 10 to 11 pt body text in a standard font, margins of 0.5 to 0.75 inch, single line spacing, one column. Avoid text boxes, tables and images in the resume itself. Export to PDF and count the pages in the PDF.

Coming from a one-page private resume?

Then your problem is the opposite: you have room to add. Add, in this order:

1. Month and year on every job, and hours per week.
2. One bullet for each phrase of the announcement's specialized-experience sentence that you truthfully meet.
3. Scale in each bullet: budget, users, cases, sites, who you advised.
4. Education details and certifications, when the announcement makes them relevant or required.

Write only what you actually did. Every resume line and questionnaire answer is part of a federal application and must be truthful.