Unfortunately, many career experts and bloggers wield a powerful sword that pokes holes in job search strategy and touts sweeping simplicity.

While the ultimate goal of a job search plan is one that you can use to smoothly navigate transition, plotting that map requires meaningful effort and thought work.

Imbibe the latest article on job search, and you’ll read phrases dripping in adjectives like “simple” and “quick” and directives that espouse the wrong or right way; best or only way.

In fact, when propelling your career forward or sideways or even a wholly different direction (e.g., backward), no clear-cut guidelines exist, except one: expect it to be harder and take longer than you initially thought.

As such, some of the broad-brush assertions that you should not take too seriously include:

Never exceed 1 or 2 pages on your resume.

The reason length is such a popular topic is because many careerist fail at focusing. Unnecessary content crowds out distinguishing value creating a cluster of confusion. The experts, therefore, advise shrinking the message down to a less-cumbersome size (even if the message remains ineffective and flat).

Describing one’s value is imperative for good resume storytelling, so much so that careerists often veer off on a tangent trying to include theirs. They include a laundry list of skills, abilities and metrics without processing and converting it all into targeted solutions.

So, before funneling your fret into issues of page length, take a deep breath and determine your valuable story points. Then, begin winnowing into a leaner page length that is skimmable, but also still meaty enough to sink into and capture the audience’s attention.