Forget Your P’s & Q’s
- nifty50s.com
- 1 minute ago
- 2 min read
Eye tracking study shows how recruiters read resumes
A recent study from ladders.com looked at how recruiters read resumes – what draws and holds their attention, and what design features work best.
First and foremost, the study revealed that recruiters spend an average of only 7.4 seconds skimming resumes. This is significant – not just for the obvious short period of time, but it’s also important within the context of the modern job market. The last time this study was done, when unemployment was high, that average was only six seconds.
When applicants are abundant and job openings are scarce, recruiters breeze through resumes. Now, when competition is tighter, the time spent reviewing a resume is not that much greater. You’re lucky to be merely skimmed. And that’s when a human – as opposed to an ATS or AI – reviews your resume.
Catching their eyes
What reviewers find engaging are “clean, simple layouts” with clear fonts. Delineated sections with bold headers tend to improve readability. Also, an “overview or mission statement” tends to resonate with recruiters.
As most readers generally tend to read following an F-pattern – across the top and down the left side, or the similar E-pattern – layouts that conform those patterns tend to draw the most attention. Eye tracking software indicates that as recruiters skim, they don’t appear to settle on any one area.
Conversely those resumes that didn’t perform well were those with little white space that looked cluttered and constituted long sentences. Layouts that did not feature sections or headers tended not to “draw the eye down the page.”
The study also found that, for the more experienced job seeker, a two-page resume is perfectly acceptable and not a deterrent. In fact, the “eye-tracking analysis” showed that recruiters – who made it to the second page – spent as much time there as on the first. Beyond two pages, however, readability drops significantly.
Using keywords in a resume remains touchy. While the automated scanners embrace keywords, ultimately the resume will be reviewed by a human and when that happens, those keywords need to be used only in context or they will be seen as a negative.