I think this varies from recruiter to recruiter and also depends on the role for which you’re applying. For one, I don’t look through stacks of resumes anymore. I hate paper. I do everything online.
This article was written by Ambra Benjamin, a Corporate Recruiter. The article can be seen as originally posted at https://www.quora.com/What-do-recruiters-look-for-in-a-resum%C3%A9-at-first-glance.
Each recruiter is different, so there’s no one way to answer this question. But I’ll highlight briefly (actually, not so briefly) how I personally absorb a resume. I should preface this by saying that currently I primarily recruit for senior-level software engineers. In my past life I recruited for PMs, MBAs, Finance, Sales, and pretty much all of it. Everything I’m about to say broadly applies to all of these fields. I also was a campus recruiter, and you read resumes of new grads a bit differently since experience is less meaty. So for non new grads, here’s how it goes in my brain: