What Recruiters Look At During The 6 Seconds They Spend On Your Resume

[banpeikun]

It's regularly posted here to keep your resume short and concise with one of the main reasons being that hiring managers don't spend as much time reading your resume as you think.

Here's an interesting study from Business Insider that uses eye-tracking to pinpoint exactly what recruiters scanning resumes are looking at. It also shows that more concise resumes get looked at more:

http://www.businessinsider.com/heres...-resume-2012-4

For EL actuarial candidates, again, the lesson is to put the exams front and center and make the entire resume clear and concise.

[Dr T Non-Fan]

Actuaries probably spend more time per résumé. Something-something OCD something-something.
If I were sorting résumés, I'd look for the top ten, and put the rest in a hold folder.

Some objective combination of subjective rankings of the following determines "best": Exams passed, college attended, GPA, work/internship experience, and amount of je ne sais quoi.

[Canadian Perspective]

I spend about 15 seconds per resume. I'm really looking for reason to get rid of candidates. I can usually cut out at least half of them from looking for the following
- Resume is ugly as sin (poor formatting, etc)
- Exams aren't where I think they should be (substantially fewer)
- Lots of awkward bullet points
- Has more bullet points for McDs than they do for their first actuarial internship

After that half is eliminated, I'll spend a little more time skilling the resume a little more closely and read their cover letter.