Some recruiters spend just five seconds looking at your resume

There is only one piece of paper that has the power to determine the rest of our lives in 30 seconds or less: our resume. The Tab spoke to Tessa Ganassi from the ExecuSearch group and an in-house recruiter to get some insight into the lives of the people that have the power to put you into the company of your dreams.

We spend hours making sure that our resume is perfect by editing every single detail, using some intricate formatting, and embellishing a very pathetic position in an inactive club to seem like the most important role. But, the agency recruiter said she takes 30-60 seconds looking at a resume while the in-house recruiter takes just five.

“The first few bullet points really tell us all,” Ganassi said.

They look for where you went to school, your GPA and any organization you’re currently involved with. But don’t just jump from one job or internship to another, our experts say, both of them emphasized that companies want to hire someone that will work with them for the long run.

“The best resumes have strong tenure, good schooling, good GPA and good detail,” Ganassi said. “The worst ones are just really jumpy, have a lot of movement, no tenure, no degree or not-detailed bullet points.”

If you go to a Tier 1 or 2 school, that might make up for a not-so-stellar GPA. “Some companies are very academically driven, so they would take the Harvard grad regardless of a 2.5 or a 3.9,” the agency recruiter said.

However, the in-house expert said that she would take majors into account and lean towards someone at a state school studying computer science over someone at an Ivy League studying sociology if they had the same GPA.

Make sure that you are as detailed as you can on your resume and your bullet points include things that you have specifically worked on, but make sure you can talk up to what you wrote.

“One of my biggest pet peeves is when an interviewee has to read their own resume to answer my questions about their background,” our anonymous recruiter said.