The Dreaded 6 Seconds: How to scale the next job application

Standing out from a lot of other applications.

A résumé by dictionary definition means a summary. In practice, it refers to a summary of your work history. Having a clear understanding of what is expected of you when a résumé is requested can reduce a lot of stress.

A résumé shouldn’t be confused with a CV. Where one summarises your work life, the other describes it but only briefly. Most technical jobs prefer asking for résumé because it’s most often enough to give the recruiter a good idea of your background and if it meets the specified requirements.

The typical culprits that often decide if a job seeker stays in the race are:

• Keywords
• Fonts
• No of Pages
• Use of Words

These usually decide the fates of every candidate at the early levels of the application. I’ll try to explain their impact at each stage.

Keywords: Keywords are the earliest used checkers for if you’re going forward in the review pipeline, it’s a simple exercise where the recruiter asks the question. Does this candidate speak the language of this particular position? Checks for keywords matching targets like positions, skillsets, accomplishments, and educational backgrounds are considered during this exercise. If the adequate match ratio is not achieved, your résumé becomes archived rather quickly.

Fonts: It is usually recommended you use simple fonts like Arial, Times New Roman, or a simple sans-serif for the fonts in your resume. Optical Character Recognition technology most times used along some ATS might not perform well with complex or rather uncommon fonts, so it’s best you stay within the boundaries of safe.

No of Pages: As we’ve discovered (probably) a résumé is a summary, so a one-page document is ideal for a résumé. Optimize space. You can take inspiration from the Elon musk approach. This is crucial during the human review phase where the dreaded 6 seconds stare decides your chance.

Use of Words: Use platforms like Grammarly to spellcheck your words. Avoid typos and grammatical errors wherever possible. Also, try to keep your tone professional and neutral. 73% of executives surveyed said they would rule out someone who had more than one typo on their résumé — and 40% wouldn’t even consider a candidate whose résumé had a single typo.

Elon Musk Resume

After knowing what directly influences the chances of your résumé, we should know what is best to include:

• Headlines: Try to avoid rankings like (junior, entry, intern-level, etc) it’s best you keep it simple and straight to what it is you are. e.g. “5 years experience as a [Job you’re applying for]” or if you only went to a top college/university you could say “Cambridge university Grad”. Do the best you can to make the headline eye-grabbing but also authentic
• Always keep each section brief. Your work history should be kept brief. Brief and straight to the point. here’s a format for your work history:

Name of company

If it’s an unknown company (Unpopular) briefly describe what they do

Your title and date of employment in the company

One line description of your responsibility

Accomplishments (Either technical or non-technical accomplishments).

Remember the goal of a resume isn’t to look pretty, it’s to be functional enough to address the methods used during evaluation and review.

There’s a new tool that lets you create different variations of résumés to meet different job posts, using the same work profile. You can check it out here.