The Skim Test
Could you recall your own resume after one skim?
We’ll show you your own resume for about 7.4 seconds — the length of the first pass it actually gets — then hide it and ask four questions. Answer from memory, then see what the resume really communicates.
This is a self-test you run on yourself, not eye-tracking, and it never pretends to simulate a specific recruiter. Source for the 7.4s figure: Ladders eye-tracking study, and that’s the triage pass — resumes that pass it get a real read afterward.
Free · No sign-up · No credit card
Drop your resume here (PDF, DOCX, TXT, or RTF — max 5 MB)
or click to browse
We parse it to run the test, then discard the file — nothing new is stored.
Why this is different from a score
A score is our read of your resume. This test is a check on whether the resume gets your own point across fast enough for anyone to read it at all — including you. If you wrote the thing and still miss your own headline title, years, skills, or best result under a timer, that is direct evidence about the layout and the opening lines, not about your memory.
The four questions are graded by you, not by us — there is no model reading your typed answers here. What you see in the reveal is computed straight from the text the same way on every run, so it never drifts between two people trying it on the same resume.
What this test will never claim
That it watched your eyes, that it knows what a particular recruiter noticed, or that missing a question means your resume failed. It is a timed memory check you run on yourself, built to make one thing visible: whether the top of your resume carries your value proposition fast enough to survive a real skim.
Read the full honesty contract →The Skim Test — common questions
Is the Skim Test free?
Yes, completely — no sign-up and no credit card. Nothing about the timed view or the four questions is ever gated.
How long do recruiters actually look at a resume?
About 7.4 seconds on average, from the Ladders eye-tracking study — but that number is the first triage pass, not the whole read. Resumes that survive it go on to get 1.5–4 minutes of real reading in the same study. This test recreates that first-pass window on your own resume; it is a self-test, not eye-tracking, and it never claims to simulate a specific recruiter.
Does it store my answers or my resume?
No. The file is parsed to text and discarded the same way every check works here, and your self-graded answers never leave your browser except as an aggregate count (how many you got, not what you typed). Nothing new is written to a database by this test.
What if the reveal gets something about my resume wrong?
The reveal is computed the same deterministic way every time from your resume's own text — no model guessing at your intent — so a wrong-looking answer usually means the resume itself doesn't state that thing plainly where a skim would land. That's information too, and it's exactly why the questions are self-graded against your own judgment rather than marked right or wrong for you.
What happens after the four questions?
You can run the full check on the same resume without uploading it again — same score, same category breakdown, same free issue list every check here gets.