Recruiters look at your resume for 7 seconds. Here's what they read.

7.4 seconds. That's how long a recruiter spends looking at your resume before they decide to read more or toss it. It comes from an eye-tracking study of 30 professional recruiters (TheLadders via HR Dive, 2018). That's the only real number the whole "top of funnel" review is built on. Everything above the fold needs to work in seven seconds.

Where their eyes actually go

The study tracked exactly six spots — they eat up about 80% of review time:

1. Your name
2. Current job title and company
3. Current start and end dates
4. Previous title and company
5. Previous start and end dates
6. Education

Notice what's not on that list: no "Summary" block. No "Objective." No soft-skills paragraph. The top third of your resume should let a recruiter read those six facts in about two seconds each.

A top third that passes

MARISOL RUIZ · Warehouse Team Lead
Atlanta, GA · marisol@example.com · 404-555-0178

EXPERIENCE
Warehouse Team Lead, Amazon (ATL9)               2023 — Present
Warehouse Associate, Home Depot DC                2020 — 2023
Stock Associate, Target                           2018 — 2020

EDUCATION
High school diploma, Atlanta Public Schools       2018

That's the first 30 vertical pixels. It passes the six-fixation test and parses cleanly in Greenhouse, Lever, Workday, Ashby, and SuccessFactors — the ATS systems that run most hiring.

Cut these from the top

• A "Summary" paragraph — parsers often drop it into "Objective" and lose your keywords.
• Photos, icons, colored bars. Workday strips them.
• Two-column layouts where dates are in the right column. Taleo and iCIMS collapse them.
• Headshots. They're a discrimination-risk flag for employers; some recruiters skip resumes with them.

Once the top third is right, under each job write three bullets

1. Scope. Who, how many, what scale. "Led 12-person night shift."
2. Outcome with a number. "Cut pick errors 22%."
3. How. What you actually changed.

That pattern matches what senior recruiters are mentally doing anyway. You're doing their math for them — and 7.4 seconds rewards that.

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