Yesterday, a friend called me and said something interesting. They applied to twenty different places but haven't heard back from any of them, and they asked if the job market is really this harsh these days.

In fact, many of you may have heard that recruiters spend only 6 seconds reviewing a resume. When I first heard this, I was skeptical, but it turns out there is evidence to support this claim.

This figure comes from a study conducted by the hiring platform TheLadders in 2012, which tracked recruiters' eye movements. A follow-up study in 2018 found that the average time had increased slightly to 7.4 seconds.

The issue is that this short amount of time is not spent reading the resume thoroughly. It is merely the first checkpoint to decide whether to continue reading, and only resumes that pass this stage will undergo a much longer review process.

So, where exactly do recruiters' eyes go during those few seconds? According to TheLadders' research, a significant portion of that time is focused on a few key elements: name, current job title and company, previous job title, employment dates, and education.

The order in which their gaze moves is also revealed: they first look at the current job title and company, then immediately move to the previous job title above it. After that, their eyes shift to the right to check the start and end dates of employment, which helps them see if the career path is continuous.

Only then do they look down to check the education section, and that concludes their review. Ultimately, this means that during those 6 seconds, the parts of the resume that are actually read are the top section, particularly the job title, company, and dates.

This is the problem... But what if we approached it differently? Instead of having a lengthy introduction at the top, it might be better to arrange the most recent two or three job titles and company names along with the employment periods in a way that is immediately visible.

In American resumes, it is customary not to include personal information such as age, photos, or marital status. This is a strategy to ensure that the recruiter's attention is focused only on the necessary information, so there seems to be no reason to fill the space with unnecessary items during those brief 6 seconds.

These days, many large companies use applicant tracking systems, commonly referred to as ATS, to filter candidates. Resumes that deviate from the prescribed format can be filtered out before they even reach human eyes, so a simple one-column layout is still considered a safe choice over designs with many tables and graphics.

This system is said to read job titles before anything else. If the actual job duties are not significantly different, slightly adjusting the wording of the job title to match the expressions used in the job posting can be one way to avoid being filtered out.

I once filled my resume with tables and graphics, only to later remove them all. They looked impressive, but I realized too late that the important information was not easily noticeable.

Therefore, listing experiences in reverse chronological order is said to be the most preferred format among recruiters. This suggests that determining the order of what to show first is more important than embellishing the resume.

I advised my friend to first review the top three lines of their resume. I told them to check if the recent job title, company, and employment period are immediately visible and whether unnecessary sentences are obscuring them.

For reference, there is also research indicating that resumes that pass the 6-second checkpoint undergo much more thorough reviews afterward. If you can get through those first few seconds well, you will have the opportunity to have your experience read properly.

Whether it's 6 seconds or 7 seconds, there's no way to extend that time. Instead, what information can be made noticeable in that short time is something the applicant can work on, so before blaming themselves for poor results, it would be wise to reassess the top of their resume first.