My resume is 6 pages. In addition, I have a Narrative about myself (3 more pages).
Here is a reality: If you are in the middle of your career, two pages maybe enough. However, if you are looking for high-pay job with a lot of responsibilities, the HR, in most of the cases, has no clue about your skills, so, they send the resume to the departmental manager who will study it thoroughly looking for the clue about your real skills based on the projects you completed. Then, if they like what they saw, the resume is forwarded back to HR to invite you for the interview.
These days, to find a highly qualified pro is not easy. And you have to stand out of the crowd with very particular skills and significant experience.
My first 1.5 pages of resume show the summary of skills, so, I cannot show the completed projects to squeeze the resume in 2 pages format.
As for recruiters, pardon me, these days there are 2% of recruiters who **really** understand your field of expertise. Most of the recruitment is outsourced to foreign countries. The folks out there don’t understand the specifics because for them ANY job is heaven. Also, they have no clue about where you do live. They will offer the jobs hundreds miles away from your home or the job that is 2 levels below your skills only because they found a keyword in your resume and and are surprised why you don’t want to take that job.
Nobody (!) from them read your resume anyway (and they are not ashamed) but rather scan your resume for particular keywords. For instance, I mentioned in my resume that I used PHP scripting in one of the projects. So, they offer a job as a PHP programmer even if I am in Information Security field and was never working as a programmer.
My advice: it doesn’t matter how many pages your resume is. What matter is a good summary of skills and completed projects. Coupled with a stand-out cover letter, it all together makes a difference. Convince your potential employer that you can handle the advertised duties, and the interview is guaranteed.