The Influence Of Text Information And Space Location On The Resume’s Selection: An Eye Movement Study

Resume is the beginning of the application and recruitment activities. The resume has asignificant meaning for both the employers and employees. How can employees create a successful resumeso that one will succeed in the selection of resumes? How can employers improve the efficiency of theprogress in resumes’ selection without reducing the successful rate? Both the employees and employershave the same seeking for the resumes. Especially for those graduate students seeking for the jobopportunities in the high competitive market, How to create an attractive resume is the first important stepfor the battle of application.To date, the study on the resume is very rare in China and most related articles are concernedabout the description for how to make resumes. Hence, the study on the attentional preference andbrowsing principles of the employers trying to select potential application is very important for providingthe empirical statistics for the creation of resumes, which also is very meaningful for the theories andpractices.Viewing form the perspective of psychology and combining the usage of eye movementrecording and interview, this study tries to explore the influence of the text content and its spacedistribution on the employers’ attentional process and scanning principle when they are browsing resumes.Study one include two experiments, in the first one,we use the2×2within subject design to getthe eye movement data relating to the resume’s selection under the time pressure condition. Theindependent variables are text information and space distribution in the resumes. The participants are thosewho have already got the certificate of human resources management at level three or above. In the secondexperiment, we still use the same experiment design and participants as the experiment one, but we changetime condition into non-pressure for making a further comparison with the result of the experiment one.In the study two, we made interviews to part of the participants and employers who did not attendour experiment in order to understand the reasons behind the selection of resumes. Also, we provide somerecommendations for how to make successful resumes from the perspective of the content and distributionon the resumes. The results are followings:1. No matter whether the experimental condition is in time pressure or not, the sequence ofcontent the employers pay attention to when browsing the resumes is: experience of practice、personalability and rewarding. The time pressure will impact the influence exerted by the these three locations onattention differently.2. No matter whether the experimental condition is in time pressure or not, the mediumposition of the page gets the most attention. Then next is below medium and bottom position of the page.From the top to bottom position, the degree of attention that the space will get is decreasing; The timepressure will impact the influence exerted by the these three locations on attention differently.3. When the most interesting contents to participants are placed at the position where theattention can be most easily paid to, the applicants will have a higher rate of getting an interview thangetting an interview under the condition that the superior contents are placed at other position or placingnon superior contents at the most suitable location.