You get about 6 seconds of a recruiters time when they are quickly scanning your resume. Your resume format plays a big part in whether you progress to an interview.
Want to know what recruiters are looking at? Read on!
There are a number of variables for why you weren’t chosen to be interviewed such as; the volume of applications, your application was submitted too late, you didn’t complete the application properly and your resume wasn’t attractive enough to the recruiter.
99.9% of the time, you will never know why you were not chosen to progress to the next stage of the recruitment process, however, a recent study provides some insight on recruiters’ decision-making behaviour.
According to The Ladders research, recruiters spend an average of “six seconds before they make the initial ‘fit or no fit’ decision” on candidates – view the full article here.
The study used a scientific technique called “eye tracking” on 30 professional recruiters. They examined their eye movements during a 10-week period to “record and analyse where and how long someone, focuses when digesting a piece of information or completing a task.”
In the short time that they spend with your resume, the study showed recruiters will look at your name, current title and company, current position start and end dates, previous title and company, previous position start and end dates, and education.
The two resumes above include a heat map of recruiters’ eye movements. The one on the right was looked at more thoroughly than the one on the left because of it’s clear and concise resume format.’
On a Likert scale of 1 to 7, self-written resumes (above left) averaged 3.9 versus 6.2 for the professionally rewritten resume (above right), a 60% usability increase.
The study also showed that “professionally prepared resumes also scored better in terms of organisation and visual hierarchy, as measured by eye-tracking technology.”
Key Recommendations
The key recommendation of the study was to consider using a professional resume writer for rewrites.
