The most cited number in resume advice — recruiters spend about six seconds on the first pass — is roughly right, but it's usually read as an insult. It isn't. Six seconds is what a trained reader needs to answer one question: is this plausibly the person we're looking for? The deep read comes later, and only for resumes that pass. Your job on page one is not to be read. It's to be scanned successfully.
Where the eyes actually go
Eye-tracking studies of recruiters converge on the same choreography: an F-shaped pattern anchored to the left edge. First fixations land on the name, then the current title and company, then dates — checking recency and progression — then a fast vertical skim down the left margin reading only the first words of each line. Education gets a late, brief glance. Everything else is peripheral.
Your resume's first job is not to be read. It's to be scanned successfully.
Designing for the scan
Once you know the path, the layout rules write themselves. Put titles before company names if the title is the stronger claim, and vice versa. Keep dates in a consistent column where the vertical skim expects them. Front-load every bullet: the first four words carry the line, because the first four words are often all that gets read. "Led migration of payment stack" survives the skim; "Was responsible for a project that involved leading" dies at word five.
Earning the deep read
None of this makes the content matter less — it decides whether the content gets its audience. The scan and the read are sequential gates, and candidates lose more often at the first one, because it's the one nobody designs for. Pass the six seconds and your carefully quantified bullets finally get their two minutes. That's the whole trade.