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A recent study by TheLadders suggests you should stop editing your resume as quickly as possible.
For their study, TheLadders asked recruiters to review a stack of resumes while connected to eye tracking software. Their data showed that recruiters spent just six seconds per resume before making a pass/fail decision. However, what they paid attention to was far more informative than their attention spans.
During the study, 80 percent of recruiters' attention was on the following items -- can you spot what they have in common?:
Name
Employer(s)
Job title(s)
Dates of employment
Education
Answer: These are all items job seekers can't change.
If recruiters spent 80 percent of six seconds (or 4.8 seconds) reviewing objective data job seekers can't change, they spent just 1.2 seconds per resume on information job seekers can control: namely, bullet points. In other words, nobody's reading your bullet points.
How can that be? Aren't accomplishments and responsibilities the reason why recruiters read resumes in the first place? Perhaps they are in theory, but not in practice.
I would take some issue with the times they're saying they allot, but for me, those things noted above are the pass/fail for the first pass only. You have to have a starting point, and that's it. If they pass, then I move on to the bullet points, the responsibilities and accomplishments, etc. and I'll spend more time on those. That's phase two.
There are additional stages you have to pass before we move onto the following stages, but those aren't referenced, so I'll spare everyone.
I could see this happening. It's similar to what I do when reviewing resumes. I scan titles and employers, then if I think it's a potential fit I go back and total up years of experience, years at each place/job hopping/job gaps, and only THEN do I review the bullets. But if the bullets are weak, it goes in the discard pile. The bullets are also where I formulate most interview questions.
The suggestion to not update or pay attention to your bullets is ridiculous advice.
By the time a resume gets to me, it's gone thru a couple rounds of screening, and I will absolutely read into the bullet points, because if it goes to an interview I will be grilling candidates on them.
For the first screening this might be applicable but as the number is cut down you better believe someone will read all the details. This is bad advice.
You don't tell us what the recruiter's objective was. Maybe the objective is to get a list of past employers to call and describe the recruiter's services? In other words a sales pitch. Without knowing the recruiter's objective the research is not of value.
Hmm... I talked to a recruiter recently who actually advised me to beef up bullet points for my most recent job, a medium-term contract position. I have a large gap prior to this job, and she said that putting in extra meaningful bullet points will help focus HM's attention on the fact that I have a recent professional job experience. She said it will be a positive even though my most recent job had only tangential relationship to the position I was applying for (I have a lot of experience in the field from before the gap, though). That's an HR person at a large international company with significant previous recruiting experience at leading US companies. So bullet points do matter.
You don't tell us what the recruiter's objective was. Maybe the objective is to get a list of past employers to call and describe the recruiter's services? In other words a sales pitch. Without knowing the recruiter's objective the research is not of value.
Rich, I don't know if you clicked on the link to the article but it's based on a study done by The Ladders. It's an eye tracking study, which I feel is flawed because it represents the first pass of a process that involves several stages. We do that as a cursory weeding out, and then get back to the bullet points later - which the study doesn't even address.
I cannot believe the guy who wrote this article is a career coach at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business. He could have delved into the study and noted where it falls short. Instead, he is almost endorsing the results.
At a time when they should be telling people bullet points are useless if they're task-oriented and not achievement-oriented, he's saying they don't count at all.
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