What Recruiters Actually Do With Your Resume in the First 90 Seconds

I'm going to tell you exactly what happens when your resume lands in front of me.

Not what the career advice articles say happens. Not what recruiters are supposed to do according to best practices. What actually happens — in real time, on a real Tuesday afternoon when I'm working a stack of candidates for an open PT director role in upstate New York.

I open your resume. I have about 90 seconds before I know whether I'm moving forward with you or moving on. Here's how those 90 seconds actually go.

The First 10 Seconds: The Scan

I'm not reading. I'm scanning. My eyes go to three places almost simultaneously:

Your name and credentials. Are your licensure designations visible and correct? PT, DPT, SLP, CCC-SLP, NP, PA-C — whatever applies to you. This sounds obvious, but you'd be surprised how often I have to hunt for credentials, or find them buried at the bottom of a two-page document. Your credentials are your professional identity in this field. They go right after your name, at the top, every time.

Your most recent role. Employer name, title, and dates. I'm immediately checking: Does this person's current or most recent position match what I'm recruiting for? If you're a speech-language pathologist and your last three roles have been in school-based settings and I'm filling an acute care hospital role, I'm already forming questions. That's not necessarily a disqualifier — but I'm noting it.

Formatting at a glance. Is this readable? Is it clean? Does it look like someone who takes their professional presentation seriously? I'm not grading you on design. I'm looking for whether the document respects my time.

Those three things take about ten seconds. They either pull me in or they don't.

Seconds 10–45: The Employment History

Now I'm reading — but I'm reading fast, and I'm reading backwards.

I want to see your career progression. I want to know if you've been moving forward or treading water. I want to see whether your tenure at each job tells me a story that holds together.

Tenure is one of the first things I assess. Healthcare recruiting is relationship-based and placement is expensive — for my clients and for me. If I see a string of 12-to-18-month stints with no explanation, I'm going to ask about it. That doesn't mean short tenure disqualifies you. Life happens. Contracts end. Facilities close. But if I can't read a coherent narrative from your employment history, I'm not going to assume the best — I'm going to wonder.

What I want to see in each role is simple: employer, title, dates, and a tight description of your scope — patient population, setting, volume, any leadership or specialty functions. Three to five bullets per role, written in plain language. Not a job description pulled from the posting. What you actually did, in that specific role, with those specific patients.

The mistake I see constantly: clinicians copy-paste generic language that could describe anyone in their discipline. "Provided evidence-based treatment to a diverse patient population." That tells me nothing. "Managed a caseload of 14–18 outpatient orthopedic patients daily, with a specialty focus on post-surgical ACL and rotator cuff rehab" — now I know something real about you.

Seconds 45–75: Credentials, Licensure, and Education

I'm looking for two specific things here.

State licensure. Where are you currently licensed? If you're applying for a position in a state where you're not licensed, are you eligible for endorsement and have you noted that? Multi-state compact membership matters — tell me if you have it. I should not have to ask.

Certifications that are relevant to the role. If you're an OT with a hand therapy certification and I'm filling a hand therapy position, that certification should not be buried in a footnote. Put it somewhere I'll see it.

Education matters less to me than it did twenty years ago in most cases — a DPT is a DPT, an MSN is an MSN. What I'm looking for is completion, institution, and year. One clean line per degree. That's it.

Seconds 75–90: The Red Flags Check

By now I've formed a provisional opinion. These last fifteen seconds are either confirming it or complicating it.

I'm looking for:

Gaps. Unexplained gaps of six months or more get flagged. Again, not automatically disqualifying — family, health, COVID, a gap year, a career pivot. But unaddressed gaps create questions I have to spend time on, and time is the thing I have least of.

Inconsistency. If your LinkedIn and your resume tell different stories about dates or titles, I notice. Recruiters cross-reference. We always have.

A resume that's been neglected. If your last update was clearly two years ago and you've been passively job searching, it shows. Outdated formatting, missing recent roles, a skills section that lists software nobody has used since 2019. It signals that you're not serious about the process yet — even if you genuinely are.

The Mistakes I See Most Often from Strong Clinicians

Here's what frustrates me: the candidates I see making these mistakes are often excellent clinicians. The resume doesn't reflect how good they actually are, and it costs them.

Too long and too thin at the same time. A three-page resume with vague bullets is the worst of both worlds. I want substance, not length. Two pages, dense with real information, is almost always better than three pages of padding.

No summary or a summary that says nothing. "Dedicated healthcare professional with a passion for patient-centered care seeking a challenging opportunity to grow." Every resume says this. Write two or three sentences that actually tell me something: your specialty focus, the settings you've worked in, and what you're looking for in your next role. It gives me a frame before I dig into the details.

Leaving off the "why" on a big move. If you went from an acute care director role to a staff clinician, or from full-time to PRN, or left a long-tenured position abruptly — just address it. A single parenthetical ("relocated for family") removes the question entirely. The absence of an explanation leaves a vacuum, and I'll fill that vacuum with a question mark.

Hiding the location. Put your city and state on your resume. If you're open to relocation, say so explicitly. If you're compact license eligible and targeting specific markets, say that too. Geographic ambiguity slows everything down.

The Bottom Line

Your resume doesn't need to be a piece of art. It needs to be a clear, honest, well-organized document that makes it easy for someone like me to understand who you are professionally and where you can add value — in about 90 seconds.

That's not a high bar. But it requires intentionality that a lot of people skip, especially mid-career clinicians who haven't had to job search in a while and are working from a resume they put together years ago.

If you're not sure whether your resume is doing the job, ask someone who reads them every day.

That's literally what I'm here for.