Recruiters and hiring managers are busy people, especially when trying to screen candidates for many jobs or many candidates for a job posting. Often, there is a rush and a sense of immediacy in finding and selecting the right candidate for a critical position.
Even if there’s no rush, it can be a daunting endeavor to sift through a stack of resumes to select those that offer some correlation between the skills the candidate possesses and the skills the company needs. Most leaders want an easy way to quickly identify the most promising resumes and easily identify those to ignore. But how do you do that? How do you recognize when a resume shows promise and warrants interviewing the candidate and delving into the candidate’s personality, knowledge, and skills? Likewise, how do you decide that a resume isn’t worth further investigation and consideration?
Here are some guidelines used to decide “yes” or “no” on a resume. Also, many of the items may not immediately disqualify a resume, but they should prompt questions for you to ask candidates if they’re invited for an interview.
Look for the guardians first
Gatekeepers are those criteria that a candidate must meet to be considered for a position. For example, if one of the requirements for the job in question states that the candidate must have a college degree in a particular field, look at the education portion of the resume to see whether or not that qualification exists. Another example is eligibility to work in the United States. By the way, I hope you included these requirements in the job posting you created and posted!
Assess career progression
Regardless of whether applicants are from the same company or have experience at many different companies, look for a progression in job responsibilities and skills. Also, assess the level of responsibilities and how the candidate contributed to the organization meeting its objectives. The candidates you want to interview are those who have demonstrated growth and increasing levels of responsibility. Note: In today’s turbulent economy, some candidates who have demonstrated growth may have stepped back to continue working. Don’t overlook these candidates because they demonstrate the ability to adapt and the courage to keep going, as well as the ethical outlook of not relying on government for handouts.
Warning: Many job applicants submit resumes that are functional in nature and not chronological. Since functional resumes don’t list current and past jobs in chronological order, look for the same clues on the job application.
Examine resume construction
The resume says a lot about a person beyond the information listed. The summaries give an idea of the levels of professionalism, quality orientation and thoroughness.
How well is the resume built? Are there misspellings? Is the resume neat and tidy? Is it easy to read and understand? How well does the candidate express ideas or portray information? Is the resume in a format that looks professional? Do the sentences make sense? How well does the candidate use grammar and vocabulary? Is the use of tense consistent? Does the candidate jump between first and third person? Often these errors are cause for quick rejection.
Since many candidates use professional resume services, you may not see such errors, but many candidates still create their own resumes and these errors can appear. Whether you’re professionally trained or not, poor spelling and grammar are no excuse, especially with the capabilities of today’s available word processing and publishing software.
These same principles apply to cover letters. Evaluate cover letters to the same standards as resume content.
The resume should be easy to read and easy to find company names, positions held (or better yet, responsibilities), and dates of employment. Hiring managers spend only a maximum of 20 seconds determining whether they want to interview the candidate or put their resume in the “Not Considered” pile.
Assess relevant skills and experience
Does the candidate have the relevant skills and experience? Basically, can the candidate solve the problems that will be encountered on the job? Identify the most qualified candidates based on skills and quantified positive results. Look for recent experience that reflects the skills being sought. Does the candidate have experience in the same industry as the job? Are measurable achievements listed? Can training quickly provide missing skills?
Skills most hiring managers look for include:
management leadership
- effective communications
- Intermediate level user skills with computers and common software
- Experience in analysis, problem solving, decision making and implementation.
- Strong work ethic and tenacity.
- Relationship, interpersonal, teamwork and collaboration skills.
most recent role
What is the current status of the candidate?
- Is the candidate employed or unemployed and why?
- Fired or fired? Because?
- How long has the candidate been in the current position? Enough time to acquire the necessary skills for the open position?
- Is your most recent experience relevant to the open position?
self promotion
How well does the candidate’s resume and cover letter sell? Has the candidate indicated a higher level of understanding about the job search by providing information interesting enough to grab your attention, or did the candidate just list job titles and dates? Look for resumes that answer these questions:
- What is our return on investment if we hire you?
- How can you improve our company and our results?
- How can you make the company more profitable?
- How will it fit into the company culture?
- Are you familiar with industry specific language?
- What well-known companies have you worked for?
- What educational credentials do you have?
- What training do you bring to the job?
evaluate keywords
Look for specific company words, technologies, or associations that are relevant to the position or that are contrary to what the company is looking for. For example, “I was an executive at Enron” or you only know the technology your company doesn’t use, or you don’t mention knowledge of the software needed to get the job done. Keywords can be technical, educational in nature, or in fact anything you can think of. Examples include MBA, networking, foreign languages, software name like Visual Basic or Java, or .NET, to name a few.
Stability and Tenure
Examine the employment history to quantify the candidate’s seniority in the listed companies. Are there gaps? Does employment history indicate frequent job/company changes? One candidate explained to me in his cover letter that he should: “…not label my 9 jobs in three years as job breaks. I have never quit a job!” So you’ve been fired from every job?
There may be valid reasons for frequent job changes in small numbers like 2 or 3 in a row, but large numbers should send up a red flag.
irritations
Here are a few things that may or may not cause a resume to be rejected, but I personally find them irritating:
- The use of “cute” resume templates: I hope people focus more on presenting and selling skills rather than using a cute method to get noticed.
- CVs written in “First Person”.
- Include “Career Goals” at the top of the summary. It’s nice, but it doesn’t really say anything to me other than “I want the job!”
- Exaggeration of titles, experience and skills. As my kids already know, I get to the bottom of things, usually through interview questions that are appropriately designed to bring out the facts. If I uncover any exaggerations, misinformation, or outright lies, the candidate is out. By the way, if I find out the truth after I’ve hired someone, I immediately have grounds to fire that person for dishonesty on the application or resume, or for lying during the interview.
- Using colored paper or odd-sized paper to make a resume stand out from the crowd, or any other non-“normal” typeface like Arial, Helvetica, and Times New Roman don’t impress me. They seem more manipulative to me than added to the candidate’s abilities.
- List personal/private interests and activities if they have nothing to do with work. I don’t care if you accept stray cats.
additional credit
I have taken the liberty of including some elements that often make a positive impression, at least for me. You may have other preferences or find fault with some of mine; use what works best for you and gives you good results.
- Email resumes instead of faxing, mailing, or hand-delivering more paper. Also, I prefer resumes in pdf file format, because I don’t have to deal with differences in software versions and they are easier to pass on to others. However, many companies today want resumes in MS Word or text so that their software can scan, store, score and prioritize resumes.
- Well Organized and Professional Appearance: I’m not including proper spelling and grammar usage here, because if the candidate didn’t use them, I probably already overlooked their resume.
- Short and concise cover letter: less is more. Again, many companies now require cover letters to test communication and writing skills.
- Specific skills that match the job posting: Shows that the candidate has read the posting carefully and compared their skills to what is being sought.
- Skills listed in the same order they were listed in the post, in order of priority: You listed the desired skills in order of priority in the job posting, right?
- Complete and correct web addresses, if used and applicable; facilitate research.
Bottom line
You and I spend enough time completing the recruitment processes. There are criteria that help us filter resumes quickly and isolate the best candidates more effectively. The fact that a candidate does not adequately represent himself or herself helps determine that the candidate is not worthy of an interview. Resumes are actually “sales literature” for candidates. If they did not take proper care when creating their resumes, they will not reflect expected work ethics, habits, and processes.