You have 30 seconds to impress a recruiter [1]. "30 seconds?? That's not even enough time to read a single job description!" Exactly. So, don't worry about making your resumé perfect; recruiters won't even read it. Is this a bad thing? Is it unfair to have your livelihood depend on 30 seconds of a recruiter's day? I don't really think so.
The Facts
I recently watched a YouTube video by Jerry Lee in which he tracked recruiters' eye movements on various resumés. The result is a fascinating heatmap that shows where the recruiters focus the most and least on a resumé (blue is the least focus, red is the most focus):
This heatmap reveals that a substantial amount of time was spent looking at the most recent job experience, and not even a second was spent on subsequent experiences. The time that was spent on other experiences was only the job title, company, and a word or two from a few bullet points. Notice that none of the bullet points were read. None of the dates were read. The literary masterpiece that expressed all your accomplishments that you consolidated into a single sentence was not even seen. But, what was read were the action words starting each sentence. This is one of the most important and fundamental aspects of writing a good resumé, and I found this website to be a pretty good resource for them.
This pattern of reading the job title, company, and action word is a trend among many recruiters that has been labelled the "F" pattern due to the F-like structure of the heatmap. Another thing to notice is that none of the recruiters ever mentioned anything about the design of the resumé. Trust me, using a word template for your resumé is NOT a good idea. Not only are these resumes oftentimes incompatible with Application Tracking Systems (ATS) which are automatic resumé parsing programs, but they also make the information much more difficult to read for the recruiter. Instead, it's better to make a basic template yourself or search them up online. I recommend browsing the r/resumes wiki for templates and resumé guidelines.
So Does My Writing Even Matter?
Of course it does. Some recruiters will analyze your resumé more than others, depending on the company and the position. Studies have even shown that 43% of recruiters mentioned that spelling mistakes are an instant pass [2]. So really, it's better to do nothing bad than it is to do everything good.
You should still write your resumé as if someone will read every word, even though that is very unlikely. You can still write your magnum opus bullet point if it makes you happy. But don't stress about it too much. If you follow some guidelines and get some peer feedback, it's likely good enough™️.
References
- [1] Pina, Angel, et al. “Using Machine Learning with Eye-Tracking Data to Predict if a Recruiter Will Approve a Resume.” Machine Learning and Knowledge Extraction, vol. 5, no. 3, 2023, pp. 713–724, https://doi.org/10.3390/make5030038.
- [2] Martin‐Lacroux, Christelle. “‘Without the spelling errors I would have shortlisted her...’: The impact of spelling errors on recruiters’ choice during the personnel selection process.” International Journal of Selection and Assessment, vol. 25, no. 3, Sept. 2017, pp. 276–283, https://doi.org/10.1111/ijsa.12179.