Why are the right CV headers so important?

 Applicant tracking systems (ATS) and hiring managers rely heavily on the layout of your resume to find information relevant to them, so an easy-to-read layout will greatly improve your chances of securing an interview.

In short, the more intuitive you organize your resume, the easier it is to decipher your information and get you an interview.

There are certain important things to keep in mind while compiling a resume; namely deciding where to put information and how to label it.

When hiring managers only have a few seconds to look at your resume, it’s important to organize it efficiently so they can easily find the most important information. Check also examples of resume headers.  

Photo by Bram Naus on Unsplash

If your information is not properly tagged, the computer simply cannot read it.

Applicant tracking systems crawl your information using page tags such as headers. If you have your resume headers properly formatted and labeled, the ATS will have no problem properly parsing your information and forwarding the relevant information to the employer.

If your resume is not properly tagged, the applicant tracking system will have trouble finding where your relevant information is. It will provide the employer with misinformation or irrelevant information — or simply reject your resume altogether. Resume header example.

In short, you can’t go wrong with the machine! A well-organized computer resume will make it easier to identify your goals and, in turn, increase your chances of passing the ATS resume test and landing an interview.

Your resume will be scanned by the hiring manager, just for a few seconds.

Most hiring managers are tasked with going through dozens, sometimes hundreds of resumes in a short amount of time. Because of this high demand, most hiring managers spend an average of about six seconds scanning each resume. Of course, six seconds is nowhere near enough time to read an entire resume. So how can we direct the employer’s eyes to the information we absolutely want them to see? A clear and concise resume headline, of course!

Let’s expand the role of the hiring manager and take a closer look at how hiring managers spend those precious six seconds analyzing each resume.

Ladders analyzed the tendencies of 30 recruiters over a 10-week period. The results say a lot about what the most important aspects of a successful resume are.

This study makes it clear that it is extremely important to have clearly marked sections and organized information. It should take less than a second for a hiring manager to find any of the above information. If the information cannot be found immediately, it may not be there.

Now that we’ve established why concise resume organization is essential to success, let’s dive into the details of how you can effectively use resume headers to organize your resume.