Today, I'd like to talk about one of the most common, prevalent, and damaging myths that we hear from the career "experts" on Reddit, LinkedIn—and every other bloody place on the internet.
That's the 6-8 second resume myth
If you've done even cursory research, you've seen it everywhere.
"RECRUITERS ONLY TAKE 6-8 SECONDS TO SCAN YOUR RESUME! IF YOU DON'T PASS THIS CRITICAL TEST, YOU WILL NEVER GET A JOB! EVERYTHING WILL BE OVER! OVER!! OVER!!!"
This is constantly repeated, as an established fact, and then some variant of this hyperbole is then used as a sales pitch.
It's everywhere, right? It's on Reddit, right? So it must be true, right?
Well, maybe not
In my 16+ years running one of the best IT resume writing services globally—not to mention my prior years as a headhunter—I can tell you that I don't read IT resumes that way. Nor did the headhunters I've worked with in the past.
So I decided to do a little research and find the origin of this "fact" with which we're all constantly bombarded.
It's interesting—as with most internet myths—to do a little digging. I keep seeing, "Research has shown a recruiter initially spends 6-8 seconds looking at your resume." But what's the research? The only basis I've been able to find for this is a "study" by a company with a very vested interest in selling their own resume services.
It took some doing, but I was able to dig up this "study." Let's just say that, to be charitable, the methodology looks pretty weak. There's no discussion of how large the test group was. How the subjects were found. Whether there was a control group. Whether the test group was compensated. What instructions were given.
The list of methodological problems goes on. And on. And on.
So even if this is "research" in some very limited sense of the word, it appears to pretty weak. And damned inconclusive.
There's also the issue of bias. As I mentioned, the company in question sold resume rewrites—so they have skin in the game suggesting that whatever they suggest will pass the fast screening that their "research" supports.
So we're left with a six page PDF, with no supporting evidence, that would be thrown out any undergraduate science class.
And from this, we have the 6-8 second rule.
Everywhere.
Every forum.
Every resume mill.
Every social media platform.
Would that good or important research got this much play. That, however, is another story.
So the bottom line is that some very questionable research has been repeated ad nauseum—until it's taken as a primary fact in the job search.
That's a real problem.
Because the job search is hard—very hard—these days
The hiring process is profoundly broken (a topic I'll address in a future article)—and job seekers don't need more stress piled on because of what are, functionally, urban myths.
So, How Do Recruiters Really Read IT Resumes?
There are a lot of recruiters out there. Good recruiters. Bad recruiters. Ethical recruiters. Unethical recruiters. Contingent recruiters. Retained recruiters. In-house recruiter.
All of these recruiters do not read resumes in exactly the same way, for exactly the same amount of time, or with the exact same eye movements.
A retained search consultant trying to fill a CTO role for a Fortune 500 client will not read a resume the way a contingent recruiter will read a hands-on IT resume for an early-career development role. An internal recruiter will read in a way that's different from both the above.
That's because a recruiter's goal is not—despite what you may have heard—to make the lives of job seekers more of a living hell than it already is. A recruiter's job, plainly and simply, is to get paid. So a recruiter will take the time to look into even a less than great resume if it looks like the candidate may be a fit.
That should be a no-brainer.
Given that, I can't tell you how long "all recruiters take to scan an resume." I can't, because there is no one number for this.
Instead, I'm going to describe how I and colleagues of mine reviewed resumes when I was a headhunter.
Generally, recruiters do do a (relatively) fast initial scan; recruiters see a lot of resumes, and have usually developed a trained eye to pick out which will be worth pursuing.
What's the Purpose of the First IT Resume Scan?
The first resume scan (in my experience, at least) isn't, primarily, to determine if a candidate is a fit.
When I read a resume the first time, my goal was just to judge how difficult the resume was to read and and how much work it would take to extract the relevant information.
If the resume is all bulleted (one of the worst resume mistakes you can make, by the way), I'd put it aside—because it's going to take time to dig through the bullets to see if there's any relevant information. That decision probably would only take me a few seconds—and that's one of many reasons NOT to bullet everything on your resume. I've discussed my very strong feeling on why all-bulleted resumes are a very bad idea previously.
If, however, the resume is clean, flows well, and presents information clearly, I'd spend more time on it—because I could get the information I need to determine if a candidate may be a fit. If I did see that the information was there, I'd take the time to read the resume in detail to determine if it was worth investing time in a call.
So there's no one length for an initial scan. A good IT resume will be reviewed for longer—a lot longer than 6-8 seconds—than an unclear, poorly formatted, badly written trainwreck.
That, too, should be a no-brainer.
The resume initial scan—however long it takes—isn't the whole process
The 6-8 second myth implies that it's make or break. Pass or fail. Survive or perish. Well, there's a little truth to that. If your IT resume is really difficult to read, or seems to have little relevant information? The initial scan will probably be the last.
But you can't avoid that, unfortunately, with a few simple tricks. The only way to get a recruiter to look at your IT resume seriously and in depth is to provide good, solid information—and provide it in a way that's readable and accessible.
Consequences of the 6-8 second resume scan myth
The 6-8 second myth—I think it's pretty clear by now that that's what it is—has a lot of negative consequences.
One of the most serious of those is writing IT resumes that have next to no content—in hopes that making the document short will ensure it passes supposed make or break scan.
The problem with that, though, is that in my experience recruiters read the resumes of promising candidates several times—and they're looking for some real meat, some real, compelling data on what the candidate has done and what the candidate has accomplished.
As I've previously discussed, that takes detail. That takes context.
Being overly concerned about passing the mythical 6-8 second scan often means that there's nothing worth going back to.
Also, like the endemic paranoia around ATS systems, this leads to putting the emphasis of your IT resume in the wrong place—on the ATS bogey-man or the mythical "fast scan."
Where should I put the emphasis when writing my IT resume?
The simple answer is, "On telling the complete, coherent story of your career."
But that answer, though correct, needs a lot more detail. I'll address that in a future post.
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