A recent study found that recruiters look at each resume for an average of 6 seconds (using eye tracking software). This is especially revealing given self reports of 4 to 5 minutes per resume. Online profiles get about the same amount of scrutiny with almost 20% of the time spent on the picture — of course this has the potential to introduce significant bias. The other few seconds is spent scanning the current and prior work experience, dates, and education. They do report that well-organized resumes, with clear headers marking the critical information, are rated significantly better. So you teach a strategy class, why should you care? First of all, this is an insight into how imperfect strategic factor markets actually are. In this context, you might ask, how can a firm gain an advantage in hiring talent. A key reason to use this example is that your students will tend to care about the job market and this will instantly get their attention. You could couple this with an exercise where teams of students rank a stack of resumes to identify candidates who might have critical capabilities for a company you are doing a case on (could work with any case where human capital is critical).

Contributed by Russ Coff