Does Your Resume Pass 6-Second Test?

"No pressure, but your resume has six seconds to make an impression before it is sent to the don't-even-bother pile.

That is how long a recruiter typically skims a resume to decide whether to pass it on to a hiring manager, said J.T. O'Donnell, chief executive of career-coaching website Work It Daily. Recruiters often have hundreds of online applications to wade through, even with algorithms helping filter many of them out. They will likely give yours little more than a glance to judge whether you make it onto the shortlist of candidates.

Your resume has to be highly "skimmable," she said at The Wall Street Journal's recent Jobs Summit. "I'm going down, looking for four to five things that I was told you need to have or you cannot be considered."

The CV won't clinch a job offer, but it gets you to the next step, she and other career coaches say. A resume that's hard to skim or fails to mention key skills could keep you from ever getting the chance to make your case in an interview.

Some ways to make your resume stand out, and some job-search killers to avoid, according to the experts at the summit:

1) Forget the professional statement.

Job seekers have long been advised to include a short paragraph summing up their skills, experience, achievements and goals. No more.

"Recruiters don't have time for that," Ms. O'Donnell said. Instead, open with a one-line "headline" stating your occupational specialty -- ideally with words matching the role you're applying for, like "digital marketing specialist" or "technical writer," she said.

Follow the headline with two short columns of bullets with concrete skills. If you coordinated a team on a big assignment and the job posting mentions project-management experience, use that same language, said Jane Oates, president of WorkingNation, a nonprofit focused on workforce development.

2) Don't be a jack of all trades.

It is tempting to pack your resume with the entirety of your work experience, especially for those who have a lot of it. Resist the urge, and focus on your relevant professional work history.

Recruiters are looking for a match to that particular job opening, Ms. O'Donnell said. They are not interested in the twists and turns of your career, which could suggest you're overqualified.

It is OK for a resume to be two pages, she adds. But make sure it is formatted with enough white space to be easily skimmed. Start each line about your experience with the bolded job title, so that they are easy to scan down the left side.

3) Use numbers.

Avoid subjective, ambiguous language, such as "passionate self-starter." The hiring manager or recruiter will assess your soft skills when they interview you, Ms. O'Donnell said. A resume is about your hard skills, which are best told through numbers. Her tip: Circle all of the nouns on your CV, because they can usually be quantified.

4) Make your LinkedIn profile the priority

"Your LinkedIn is really your best resume," said Brian Liou, founder and CEO of Rora, which advises tech-industry professionals in negotiating with employers. Recruiters trawl LinkedIn to find candidates for a given job opening. A few hacks can improve your chances of coming up in their searches.

First, set a reminder to switch up some of the keywords in your profile every two weeks. Changing the content helps prompt the site's algorithm to re-scan your profile, keeping it toward the top of recruiter searches.

And take advantage of Creator Mode. The setting alters the presentation of profiles to emphasize topics that users discuss most on the platform and lets them choose hashtags aligned with their skills.

5) Resist using ChatGPT.

The artificial-intelligence chatbot from OpenAI is a popular tool for creating and tweaking resumes. The trouble is, recruiters can spot a ChatGPT-built resume "a mile away," Ms. O'Donnell said, "and you get points off for that sort of thing."

The chat assistant can be helpful If you're building a resume from scratch, but use it only as a starting point, she cautions.

She suggests using a free word-cloud app. (Wordart.com and wordclouds.com are two popular ones.). Paste the text of the job posting to see which words show up as the biggest -- the ones repeated most often in the ad.

"That's how you're going to find your top five or six things" to describe your skills and experience, she said." [1]

1. Does Your Resume Pass 6-Second Test?
Rhone, Kailyn.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 17 Apr 2023: A.12.