The Need for Resume Speed

"If your reader needs more than 10 seconds to find this information, your resume is going to the trash."

The advent of the Internet has been a blessing and a curse to the modern corporate recruiter. On the positive side, the Internet makes open positions far more visible than before and candidate flow is excellent. On the negative, the Internet makes open positions far more visible than before and candidate flow is excellent. In fact, candidate flow is often so strong it’s overwhelming. The busy corporate recruiter has little time to sort the wheat from the chaff.

If it takes your reader more than 10 seconds to understand your objectives and related experience, your resume is shredder food. Seriously, in 10 seconds or less, your reader should be able to figure out

1. What kind of position you’re looking for
2. How many years you’ve been doing that kind of work
3. Where you worked
4. Job titles held
5. Supporting education

If the reader has to work to find this information, she won’t. She’ll simply go on to the next resume.

That is so important, I’m going to repeat it:

If your reader needs more than 10 seconds to find this information, your resume is going to the trash.

Here are a few tips to make sure your resume is speed-readable:

1. Make sure your name and contact information are AT THE TOP (never anywhere else).
2. Make sure job titles are bold-faced or very easy to find (the reader will scan these quickly before deciding if she will invest time reading your carefully crafted text)
3. Make sure dates are easy to find, not buried.
4. Avoid "functional resumes" like the plague. It makes piecing together dates and duration too much work for the reader. Chronological resumes are BY FAR preferred by the reader. If you don’t provide a chronology, the reader will try to make one up for you. It’s natural when you read a lot of resumes. It takes too much time, and the reader will become frustrated and move on.

The 10-Second Test: Ask a friend who doesn’t know much about your work to scan your resume for 10 seconds and learn as much as possible about who you are, what you want, and how qualified you might be. Time that person, and see how your resume is performing in the 10-second test.

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