Do you know that employers and recruiters spend less than 30 seconds to scan your resume and determine whether you have what it takes to move to the next hiring stage? You may be a great candidate but your resume may not reflect that.

So how do you grab their attention in 30 seconds?  Take the 30 second resume test:

  1. Step 1:  Take the Position ad and highlight 5-8 key skill requirements
  2. Step 2:  Fold the first page of your resume in half
  3. Step 3. Set the clock to 30 seconds and count how many key skill requirements and accomplishments match the highlighted points in the job ad.

You could read a lot in 30 seconds but to pass the test you need to match at least 5 key skill requirements and/or accomplishments within 30 seconds.

Think of how you might read a newspaper –  you read headlines, bolded fonts and quotations. Rarely do we read a newspaper front to end without skipping a few paragraphs. Articles are usually organized with sub-headlines. Quotations are formatted as an easy attention grabber. See how you can translate this to your resume? Best of luck!

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