The first six seconds: what a recruiter sees before they read

The often-quoted figure is that recruiters spend six or seven seconds on a resume before deciding whether to keep reading. Treat the exact number with suspicion, but the underlying point holds: the first pass is a glance, not a read.

What can somebody take in during a glance?

Shape

Before any words register, the eye reads layout. A page with generous margins, clear headings and consistent spacing signals care. A wall of nine-point text with three different fonts signals the opposite — and it signals it before the reader has learned anything about you.

This is the cheapest improvement available. You do not need a designer; you need white space and one font.

Company names and titles

The glance lands on the left edge, where employers and roles live. Make them scannable: employer and title on one line, dates right-aligned, consistent every time. If a reader has to hunt for where you worked, they will assume the answer is unimpressive.

Recency and gaps

Human readers notice the top job and its dates. If your most recent role ended a while ago, address it in the summary in one clause rather than leaving it to be inferred. Career gaps are ordinary — caregiving, study, illness, redundancy, a deliberate break. Named, they are a fact. Unnamed, they become a question.

Length

One page for early career, two if you have a decade behind you and the second page earns its place. Nobody has ever been rejected for concision.

Then, actually, the words

Once the glance passes, someone reads the summary and the first two bullets of your current role. That is the real estate that matters. Everything below it supports the case; those five lines make it.

So the practical order of work is the reverse of how most people write a resume. Get the shape right, get the top five lines right, and only then polish the bullet on the internship from 2019.