How To Redesign Your Resume For A Recruiter’s 6-Second Attention Span

by mark wilson @ fastcodesign.com

 

THE AVERAGE RECRUITER SPENDS SIX SECONDS ON YOUR RESUME. 

SO THIS IS WHAT YOU DO.

It’s frightening. You’ll spend most of your waking life at a job, yet, according to a new study by TheLadders, the average recruiter spends just six seconds looking at your resume. By the end of that time, they’ll determine whether you’re “a fit” or a “no fit.”

“The only research that had been done in this domain was self-reporting surveys, which simply was not good enough for us to understand what drives recruiters’ decision-making,” Will Evans, Head of User Experience at TheLadders, tells Co.Design. So Evans led a study that followed 30 recruiters for 10 weeks. Or, more accurately, it followed just their eyes. Using eyetracking gear, Evans’ team measured what recruiters really see.

 

The result is this heat map tracking six seconds of someone’s attention span. (The darker the spot, the longer a recruiter’s eyes sat on that part of the page.) It’s absolutely jarring to see such a clinical view on resume analysis--a clinical view that Evans refers to simply as “a design problem.” Namely, it’s up to job seekers to design a resume that can fit within what are now known restraints.

“Both resumes and online profiles should have a clear visual hierarchy, following a format that matches recruiters’ mental model,” Evans advises. “To reduce the strain of visual complexity, focus on a balanced, grid-based design that gives affordance, has a natural rhythm, and tells a compelling story of steady progression in your career.”

He recommends liberal use of both typography and white space to enable effortless scanning of titles, company names, and education. And that approach makes sense when you return to our trusty heat map. The hot spots are routinely those left-aligned bold headings, and the recruiter’s entire workflow just cruises through the left side of the page. Meanwhile, any big blocks of texts aren’t read whatsoever.

So don’t consider headings pedantic; consider them what Evans calls “quick bursts of information,” or the type of information you can convey in a matter of moments. But at the same time, he also recommends to cut whatever you can.

 “A resume is not the time to write a screenplay or jam every activity or responsibility you have ever done in your previous roles,” writes Evans. “We firmly believe that a minimalist approach to the design that focuses on the most important data and removes all information that does not solve a recruiter’s or hiring manager’s need should be removed.” This minimalist approach should be supported from content all the way through formatting. And that means something very strange: To stand out, you actually want your formatting to conform. Even clever infographics should be cut. 

“Avoid unnecessary embellishment, or as Edward Tufte might call it, ‘chart junk.’ Visual elements that do not solve a recruiter’s need or goal should be removed,” writes Evans. “This may be somewhat controversial, but we have proven data revealing that visual resumes, images, and infographics are not a good idea--at least not at the initial screening part in the process. Save those for the hiring manager when you can present your portfolio and showcase your design acumen.”

http://www.fastcodesign.com/1669531/how-to-redesign-your-resume-for-a-recruiter-s-6-second-attention-span

Scorecard reveals wide disparities in care across the country

NEW YORK – Healthcare access, cost, quality and outcomes can vary greatly from one community to the next, both within states and across states, depending on the performance of the healthcare system available to residents, according to a new report from the Commonwealth Fund Commission on a High Performance Health System.

In the first scorecard measuring how 306 local U.S. areas are doing on key healthcare indicators such as insurance coverage, preventive care, and mortality rates, researchers at The Commonwealth Fund found significant differences between the best- and worst-performing localities. Major U.S. cities also showed wide disparities on many key measures of healthcare, with San Francisco and Seattle ranking among the top 75 local areas in the country, and Houston and Miami ranking in the bottom 75. An interactive map [see below] accompanying the report allows comparison of cities and communities across the country.

The stark differences in healthcare add up to real lives and dollars. According to the scorecard, 66 million people live in the lowest-performing local areas in the country. If all local areas could do as well as the top performers, 30 million more adults and children would have health insurance, 1.3 million more elderly would receive safe or appropriate medications, and Medicare would save billions of dollars on preventable hospitalizations and readmissions.

The report, "Rising to the Challenge: Results from a Scorecard on Local Health System Performance, 2012," and the online interactive map [see below] rank local areas on 43 performance metrics grouped into categories that include access to healthcare, healthcare prevention and treatment, potentially avoidable hospital use and cost and health outcomes. The 43 metrics include potentially preventable deaths before age 75, prevalence of unsafe medication prescribing, the proportion of adults who receive recommended preventive care, and the percentage of uninsured adults.

The report finds there is room to improve everywhere, with no community consistently in the lead on all the factors that were measured. However, there were geographic patterns: Local areas in the Northeast and upper Midwest often ranked at the top, while local areas in the South, particularly the Gulf Coast and southern central states, tended to rank at the bottom on many measures.  Read the full article here.