How hiring managers read your resume
On average, recruiters spend about seven point four seconds scanning your resume. Which means you must ensure the most relevant information is located at the top. It’s important to remember that a recruiter is looking for reasons not to hire you, as opposed to reasons to hire you.
Their goal is to find the best candidates to present to the hiring manager.
There are a few tips for capturing a recruiter’s attention.
- Keep your layout simple and organized. It’s much easier for a recruiter to quickly scan your resume if you’ve clearly labeled sections.
- Understand which format will showcase you the best. There are three formats we can use to build our resume.
Format 1: A Reverse chronological format, which is the most common format. In this format we emphasize our work experience by listing the most recent first. The work experience section is subsequently followed by skills and education. This format is great for people with any level of work experience. Whether you’re a student looking for your first job, or an experienced candidate with many years in the industry, the reverse chronological format is always a safe and familiar choice. This format is also great for people without large gaps in their employment history, and who are looking to stay in the same industry or obtain a similar job to their current role. There are however some downsides that come with the reverse chronological format. Since this is the most widely used resume format, it’s more difficult to stand out from the rest of the candidate pool. And if you have a large gap in your employment history, or no relevant work experience, this format might draw attention to those areas.
Format 2: The functional format, or the skills based format, where we move the skills section to the top of the resume. This is the least popular resume format, and can be more time consuming for recruiters to read. The functional resume format is really great for people who have a vast amount of skills, because it allows you to showcase the things you’re good at. This format is also great if you have a gap in your employment history, or if you’re looking to make a career change, as the recruiter won’t immediately focus on your work experience. Keep in mind that the functional resume format is the least often used format, and as a result your recruiter may be unfamiliar with it.
Format 3: The combination format, in which we blend the reverse chronological and functional resume formats. In this format we equally emphasize work experience and skills. This format works great for people with a wide variety of skills and experiences, however it requires you to have enough skills and work experience in order to look complete. When I was building my resume, I chose the combination format, because as a mid level software engineer, I have a backlog of skills and work experience to showcase. If you’re a student or entry level candidate, you should select the reverse chronological format, as you might not have a multitude of skills to highlight. If you’re a senior candidate you can safely pick any one of the three resume formats, as you have enough work experience and skills to feature. The last tip is to avoid a common resume red flag, omitting dates. It’s important to ensure all of your work experiences have dates. When you omit dates from your resume it can indicate to a recruiter that you’re trying to hide something, and you should always list the month and year of your employment, or you risk short selling yourself. For example, if you worked at company from January 2018 to December 2019, if you only list the years, it appears as though you worked for one year, but you really have two years of experience. Listing the month and year clearly indicates that you have two years of experience with the company. By leveraging the appropriate resume format, sticking to a clean and organized hierarchical layout, and listing detailed dates for your education and work experience, you’ll be one step closer to capturing your recruiter’s attention.
