What do recruiters look for in a Resume at first glance?

A resume is a piece of paper that decides whether you get an offer or not! Who would take a chance to lose out on a job opportunity? Being a recruiter let me be honest with the fact that Yes! Most of the recruiters spend 6-10secs on average looking at a resume. 

You might be wondering that a recruiter might be looking for the fancy templates, the copy & paste summary section, education, resume length, the skills, the projects so on but remember it also depends on the role for which you're applying. 

Just like other job roles we do have tight targets to find new hires for the companies or clients so we are always on time crunches and the more dreadful part is we have to deal with hundreds upon hundreds of resumes before choosing the perfect ones to extend an offer. Most of you might have encountered this situation where you and your friend apply for an interview with the same qualifications, your friend gets selected for a job interview, and you didn’t. Have you wondered what could be the reason? It’s the representation of the resume that made the difference as it is the first thing that represents you to an employer.

Since we sort through tons of resumes each day, we can tell at a glance that whether to place a resume in the "YES pile" or toss it in the "NO pile". So, it’s essential that your resume is appealing so that it attracts the recruiter’s attention and to be placed into the yes folder. 

Each recruiter has their style of scanning the resume and it also varies from a fresher to an experienced resume so here I’ll be discussing in general how we would skim a resume. The key things discussed below apply to all non-new grads.

Here are the 3 Key Things Recruiters notice at the First Glance:

1) Company Details 

The very first thing that catches an eye of a recruiter is the company it’s not that some companies are good and some are bad but because we generally use a simple equating formula so that our search focus is set right e.g., software engineer’s working on any products would scale well for product companies, an automotive design engineer would contribute better for an automobile firm, etc. Another point to be noted is that we recruiter do review your current, as well as past companies just to fine-tune, our formula. This formula works around a lot of assumptions and the gut feeling based on past hiring trends so it varies from recruiter to recruiter but still, this is a bullseye pointer.

2) Keywords

Usually every role we hire would have two types of skill sets “MUST” have skills and “GOOD” to have skills. So, these skill sets are called keywords. We would look for these “MUST have” ones for any resume we skim through a couple of times I have used CTRL + F to pull out the keywords if not highlighted right e.g., Java full stack developer role our eyes would quickly search for Java (7/8), the front-end skills (Angular/React) and these are called the “MUST” have skills. The keyword search narrows the search as well as saves our time. But be very cautious while putting in the keywords, I recommend not to dump your resume with all irrelevant skills you’re not aware of. 

3) Overall Experience

We, recruiters, try to figure out your career journey at the first glance, the key details like your current job position whether it is aligned to the role we are hiring for, job status (employed/unemployed) and if unemployed then how many months, is there any career gaps, stints with each company(stagnate/hoppy), the career progression (designations/promotions), the roles and responsibilities aligned and the education details. These details will help us to get the gist of your career.

This skimming process would take us less than 15 seconds before we place a resume into the consideration pile. We would get into the depth of the resume on or before the first phone call with the candidates. You got to hook the recruiter within seconds to stand a chance to advance to the interview stage so ensure the above categories are communicated well. 

Happy job hunting!