5 Common Résumé Questions: Best Practices for Formatting, ATS, Dates & Experience

Ask a group of résumé writers, career professionals, and recruiters about résumé best practices, and you will probably hear one particular answer fairly quickly:

It depends.

That can frustrate job seekers who are looking for definitive rules. Should a résumé have one column or two? Should you include 10 years of experience, 15, or 20? Do dates need months? What exactly makes a résumé “ATS-friendly”? When should graduation dates disappear?

I recently took these five questions to my LinkedIn community and invited people who regularly write, review, recruit from, and advise on résumés to weigh in. A big thank you to everyone who shared their perspective (check out the post and all comments on my profile). The range of responses is exactly what made the discussion so valuable, with insights from résumé writers, career professionals, recruiters, and others who work closely with job seekers and hiring teams.

The discussion was interesting because there was plenty of agreement, but certainly not unanimity.

After more than 20 years of writing résumés and working with executives, I have learned that very few résumé decisions should be made simply because someone on the internet declared something a “rule.” Strong résumé strategy considers the individual, their career history, their target, and the needs of the person who will eventually read the document.

Still, best practices matter. Here is where the conversation landed.

1. Should You Use a Single-Column or Two-Column Résumé?

This question generated some of the strongest opinions.

Many contributors clearly favoured single-column résumés, especially for readability and predictable parsing.

Executive career expert Colleen Paulson was unequivocal:

“I would never use a 2-column resume. I have never seen one that is easy to follow and they can have issues in parsing.”

Recruiter Kristen Fife also voted for single-column because it is “much easier to read,” while Director of Recruiting Elias Cobb called it the safer choice, noting that, in his experience, two-column formats can waste space and do not always parse well.

But there wasn’t complete agreement.

Career coach Markos Korsesis said he prefers two columns because he generally finds them easier to read, except when someone has very little information to present. Another commenter pointed out that certain industries and occupations may lend themselves more readily to alternative layouts.

My take: For most of the executive résumés I create, readability and the human reader come first, especially at this career level. A document needs to guide the reader naturally through the person’s value proposition, career story, and evidence of impact. I love the use of selective design components, including colour and bolding, but I never use a two-column format as I find it more limiting in space and performance.

Single-column formatting is certainly the safest and simplest option. That does not automatically mean every two-column résumé is ineffective. Design decisions should earn their place by making information easier to absorb. If formatting interferes with readability, hierarchy, or parsing, it has failed, no matter how attractive it looks.

The résumé is a marketing document. Presentation matters, but presentation should always support the message.

2. How Many Years of Experience Should You Include on a Résumé?

Here the responses became much more nuanced. Some professionals preferred a relatively tight window. Kristen Fife suggested seven to 10 years unless the candidate is an executive, while Rebecca Bosl recommended focusing primarily on the last 10 to 15 years.

Others were comfortable going considerably further.

Elias Cobb said:

“I’d say up to 20 is safe. Beyond that isn’t all that relevant.”

Yet Colleen Paulson challenged the idea of an arbitrary cut-off altogether:

“You don’t have to limit experience to the past 10-15 years, but I might not include dates for the very early experience.”

That distinction matters.

My take: I don’t believe résumé writers should pull out a red pen and automatically delete everything that happened 15 years and one day ago. Instead, relevance should drive the decision.

For a senior executive, an earlier role may include critical industry experience, show the start of a specialization, establish experience with a major organization, or provide evidence directly related to the next target.

At the same time, a 25- or 30-year career does not require equal coverage of every role. The résumé should generally become more selective as we move backward.

One commenter, Brigid Leishman, described the résumé as an “upside-down triangle,” with roughly 80% of the focus on recent roles. I like that analogy because it captures an important principle: career history can remain without receiving equal real estate.

Older experience can often be summarized, condensed, or even presented without dates when appropriate.

3. Should Résumé Employment Dates Include Months and Years?

This one produced a genuine split. Some respondents felt years were perfectly adequate. Others argued strongly for months.

M. Lisa Forner explained why recruiters may want greater precision:

“Definitely put months and years! Especially if a position requires X years of experience. Without it, a job from 2021-2022 could be 2 months or 24.”

Ben Wiant raised a similar concern, noting that reviewers may end up doing the math themselves when trying to determine tenure.

Other recruiters were far less concerned. Kristen Fife said she personally doesn’t care, although she noted that many people prefer month/year formatting. Elias Cobb simply said years are fine.

My take: There is no universal answer here.

Months can create clarity, particularly when tenure matters, a candidate has held several shorter roles, or an employer needs to determine exact years of experience. Years alone can create a cleaner presentation and may be perfectly reasonable for a senior executive with a stable career history.

What I would avoid is manipulating dates in a way that intentionally obscures something significant. If the reader discovers information later that makes the résumé feel misleading, the formatting decision has created a credibility problem.

4. What Makes a Résumé ATS-Friendly?

This may have produced the strongest consensus of all five questions.

Several contributors questioned the idea that an ATS résumé should somehow be treated as an entirely different species of résumé.

Former recruiter Melanie Mitchell Wexler wrote:

“A resume that’s clean, well-formatted, and easy to scan works for both the software and the human reading it. They’re not two different resumes; they’re the same resume done well.”

Kashaf Noor made a similar point:

“If it has the right keywords strategically placed, a clean format, and is relevant to the role, it’s already ATS-friendly.”

Jonathan Soormaghen summed it up nicely:

“A well-written resume with a clean layout, relevant keywords, and clear accomplishments should already be ATS-friendly. No secret formula required.”

My take: I agree. The phrase “ATS-friendly” has become so heavily marketed that job seekers sometimes believe they need a special résumé written primarily for a machine. They don’t.

Yes, technical considerations matter. Avoid unnecessarily complicated formatting. Use recognizable headings. Make information easy to locate and interpret. Align terminology and keywords with the target role.

But the résumé still has to work when a human opens it, and that human needs much more than keywords. They need to understand what you have done, the scale at which you have done it, the problems you can solve, and the results you have generated.

For an executive résumé in particular, keyword matching without meaningful career evidence creates a very weak marketing document.

5. Should You Include Graduation Dates on a Résumé?

This question produced another fairly strong pattern. Most respondents saw little reason for someone with 20+ years of experience to include graduation dates.

Elias Cobb said simply:

“Never include graduation dates.”

Kristen Fife offered a more contextual guideline, suggesting graduation dates generally matter only for about the first five years after school.

Ben Wiant was also more nuanced, saying dates may make sense early in someone’s career or when someone has recently completed an MBA or another advanced degree relevant to their target.

My take: Ben’s view is closer to how I approach it. For an established executive, the value of the education usually lies in the credential itself, not the year it was earned.

If someone earned a recent executive MBA, specialized credential, or advanced degree that contributes directly to their current positioning, the date may provide useful context. Otherwise, ask what the date actually adds.

If the answer is “very little,” it probably doesn’t need valuable résumé space.

So, What’s the “Right” Way to Write a Résumé?

Perhaps the biggest takeaway from the entire discussion was that résumé writing involves far fewer absolute rules than people think.

Best practices provide useful guidance, and certain formatting choices tend to be safer. Recruiters also have conventions they expect to see, while technical considerations, audience preferences, industry norms, and individual circumstances can influence the strategy.

But good résumé strategy requires something more: judgment!

A résumé for a 28-year-old professional making their first major career move should not follow exactly the same strategy as one for a 57-year-old executive pursuing a COO role. Someone with 25 years in one industry has different decisions to make than someone who has changed sectors 3 times. A candidate with 6 employers in 8 years has different date considerations than an executive who spent 17 years with one company.

That is why I hesitate whenever I see sweeping résumé advice built around words like always and never.

The better questions are:

Who is this résumé for? What does that reader need to know? Which information is most relevant to the target? Where is the evidence that proves the candidate can deliver at the required level? How can we make all of that easy to understand quickly?

Those questions lead to strategy.

And ultimately, strategy is what turns a résumé from a career history into a career marketing document.

If you are looking for a resume strategist to help you create a strong, modern executive resume, reach out. I can help.