Here’s What a Resume Looks Like in 2023

If it’s been awhile since you’ve sent out a resume or cover letter, you may be surprised by how SHORT they are today.

And with so many people sending out resumes this year (unemployment has skyrocketed with the COVID-19 pandemic), you’ll want to make sure your resume stands out from the crowd.

Biggest change to resumes in recent years? Short recruiter attention span

I’m a technical writer who has written resumes and bios for my executive clients (COOs, colonels, chiefs of staff, corporate vice presidents, senior product managers, business owners) for 21 years.

The biggest change I’ve seen in the last 5 years is how BUSY recruiters are today.

As a result, recruiters READ MUCH FASTER — and so resumes have become shorter and more condensed to accommodate this. Resume formatting is now very clean and uncluttered — with a lot of white space.

In fact, TheLadders recently did an inventive study of how 30,000 recruiters looked at resumes through an eye-tracking software.

Their results showed that recruiters spend only 7.4 seconds looking at a resume before making a decision. That’s not a lot of time.