Study: Recruiters review resume for six seconds

Recruiters spend an average six seconds reviewing resumes, according to a report

One of the major challenges of the hiring process is its time-consuming nature. In fact, recruiters often acknowledge that outside recruitment can be an expensive process, due to the amount of hours and resources companies must place in securing talent, particularly when hiring for advanced positions like network administration jobs or application development jobs.

Perhaps then it should be no surprise that when recruiters do review resumes, they wish to do so in the quickest and most efficient way possible, according to a recent study. TheLadders conducted a 10-day assessment of professional recruiters that tracked the eye activity of these administrators while they were reviewing resumes. Ultimately, the report found recruiters spend an average six seconds analyzing each resume. This fact is almost certainly due to the fact that on-site recruiters are often required to review hundreds of resumes submitted by candidates without the benefit of knowing which jobs they have been submitted to.

In addition, recruiters aim to make the most of this time by targeting specific areas of the resume they may feel to be most valuable. Key information points – such as the candidate's name, current employment and position information, the start and end dates for previous positions and education information – held recruiters' gaze for the longest periods of time.

The report said this information may help job candidates better develop their resumes to ensure that, no matter how long recruiters review these documents, they are able to ascertain the most intriguing information quickly.

On the management side, it may be clear that recruiters possess a need to optimize this process and maximize their time spent reviewing new candidates. When hiring for high-level IT architecture jobs or project management jobs, it may benefit these administrators to partner with an IT recruitment firm that can also provide IT management consulting services, which could be the first process in the effort to build a better overall recruitment strategy.