How Recruiters Review Your Resume

Stumbled upon a really fascinating heatmap-based study (PDF) on how recruiters review your online resume. This quote struck me:

In fact, the study’s eye tracking technology shows that recruiters spent about 6 seconds on their initial “fit/no fit” decision.

I think I average 30 seconds or so once a recruiter has done an initial "fit" screen. I'll have to ask our recruiting staff if this holds water or not.

Their recommendations1 were interesting2:

  1. Remove your profile photo.
  2. Remove all visuals
  3. Clearly state your Name, current title/company/employment dates, previous title/company/employment dates and education. These are the 80% of the 80/20 rule. Everything else is fluff.3

  1. Both explicitly stated and implied.↩

  2. It should be noted that this study was done by The Ladders, which is a job board, and they clearly state that they think their style of profiles are superior and are the model to be followed. So, you know, take that as you will.↩

  3. Incidentally, this is how my actual resume is formatted. I exclude my skills list, for instance.↩

May 23rd, 2014
management

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