Your resume has 6 seconds to impress, study says
According an eye-tracking study, recruiters spend seconds before they decide to toss or keep your resume for consideration. Here’s what they will look at during those few critical moments.
Recruiters only spend about 6 seconds reviewing a candidate’s résumé to determine whether the person is a potential fit for a position, a recent study (pdf) by TheLadders says.
Compare that with the 4-5 minutes per résumé that recruiters have self-reported in the past.
TheLadders’ report was based on data from an eye-tracking study of 30 professional recruiters who were monitored over a 10-week period as they performed online tasks, including reviewing résumés and candidate profiles.
Below are key findings from the study:
What recruiters look for on résumés
The recruiters in the study spent almost 80 percent of their résumé review time on the following elements:
Beyond those six elements, recruiters did little more than scan for keywords to match the open positions.
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