# The six-second scan > Which of your strongest facts are inside the part of page one a recruiter reads first - a position, not a grade, and why it refuses on a two-column layout. Source: https://www.revquix.com/docs/resume/six-second-scan Last verified: 2026-09-04 --- A first pass over a resume is short. This shows you exactly what is inside that window on yours - and which of your strongest facts are not, so you can move them up. 1 credit, at [the six-second scan](https://www.revquix.com/dashboard/tools/six-second-scan). ## What it actually checks It takes the part of page one a reader reaches first in your document's own reading order, and reports which of **four specific signals** are not in it: 1. **How long you have been doing this** - stated as a number, rather than left to be added up from your dates. 2. **Your core stack.** 3. **Your strongest measurable result.** 4. **Your seniority.** Each one that is missing comes with a short explanation of why it matters _there_ specifically. ## Position beats content Almost every resume has the good material on it somewhere. The problem is rarely that you have nothing to say - it is that your best fact is in the third bullet of the second role, while the top of page one is a title, a generic summary and a list of skills. Which is also what everybody else's top of page one is. > **Note** - A skills list is a claim; a bullet with an outcome is evidence > > The same technology named inside a result you achieved is worth far more than the same word in a > comma-separated list. When the evidence sits below the fold, a fast reader only ever sees the claim - > and claims do not differentiate. ## There is no score The finding is a position, not a quality. Your years of experience are either inside the first pass or they are not; there is no meaningful way to be 63% inside it. Rolling four binary observations into a number out of a hundred would look more rigorous and tell you less. If you want a scored, weighted view of the whole document, that is [the readiness score](https://www.revquix.com/docs/resume/your-readiness-score). ## Where "six seconds" comes from Published recruiter eye-tracking research by The Ladders. It is not something Revquix has measured, and we cite it as the industry's rule of thumb rather than as a fact about your applications. > **Warning** - This is not an eye-tracking tool > > We do not observe readers and make no claim to. What is computed is the part of page one that comes > first in your document's own reading order - deterministic and checkable. The report shows you the > extracted text so you can confirm it is your resume's opening. > > The useful part does not depend on the exact number: whatever a first pass lasts, it is short enough > that a fact on page two is not in it. ## It refuses on a two-column resume Reading order across two columns interleaves them, so the "first twelve lines" of a two-column document would be alternating fragments from both sides of the page. Every finding derived from that would be wrong, so the tool declines and says why rather than producing a confident answer from a broken premise. **Nothing is charged for that run.** The refusal is useful on its own: a two-column layout is also the one most applicant tracking systems mis-read. [The ATS check](https://www.revquix.com/docs/resume/the-ats-check) is free and will tell you what else that layout is doing. ## What it will not do It will not rewrite anything. It tells you which facts to move up and which line is doing the least work - moving them is a five-minute edit, and it is yours to make. ## Related - [The ATS check](https://www.revquix.com/docs/resume/the-ats-check) - Whether the file parses at all. - [Writing good bullets](https://www.revquix.com/docs/resume/writing-good-bullets) - Turning a claim into evidence.