Your Resume Only Has 6 Seconds to Live. How long do recruiters and hiring managers spend reviewing your resume on average? When you ask hiring managers how long they spend reviewing resumes, studies have shown that the average time is 4-5 minutes. That’s self-report data. Is this reality? It’s BS A recent eye tracking study discovered something a little different. That’s right. You shouldn’t believe that the finer points of your work experience, hidden in a paragraph, will be noticed, especially when there are so many candidates. They are not. Formatting is important. Would you read this blog post if it were one long paragraph with no headings, white space, and nothing to break it down? No! This composite heat map of eye-tracking from the report is available for your review.