Hiring is a very tiring process; hence it is important that recruiters use some efficient resume screening tips. Because of the high volume of applications to a job posting, it may take recruiters several hours longer than necessary to screen the resumes if they fail to follow an effective screening process. In the end, they may still fail to make a good hire.
Therefore, this article will serve as a guide to help you as a recruiter with resume screening tips that will make your job easier and more effective. That is, you will be able to hire a qualified candidate faster for a job.
Select the Resumes That Meet The Required Qualifications
This is the first and the most important of the resume screening tips. Every job position comes with a list of qualifications applicants must meet. The most important ones in your first round of screening are the required qualifications.
Most of the time, candidates without the required qualifications will need some piggybacking if employed. Thus, it is better not to bother taking them to the next level since they lack the minimum qualification to do the job. It will save you some quality time, thus speeding up the screening since you will have fewer resumes.
A good example is when a UI/UX designer does not have skills or qualifications in design software like Adobe XD or Figma. If this is a minimum qualification for the position, it is a RED flag.
Shortlist Applicants That Meet Preferred Qualifications
Another important one on our list of resume screening tips is shortlisting based on preferred qualifications.
Preferred qualifications are generally non-required but are great pluses for the job positions. The candidates can do the job well since they passed the minimum or required qualifications, but these preferred qualifications can help them do it better.
Now, let’s return to our UI/UX designer job position. Say the job lists qualifications in Adobe XD as the minimum because it is the main software used by the company. However, since 2% of the company’s clients sometimes prefer their work in Figma, it lists it as a preferred qualification.
In this situation, even though the candidate has the skill to serve 98% of the company’s clients, the 2% is also very important. Hence, only those with the preferred qualifications should be allowed to advance to the next screening stage. This will help you improve the quality of hire.
Skim Through The Cover Letters
Another salient one in our resume screening tips is cover letter skimming. Because of the many applications job seekers send daily, some make templates of their cover letters and send them in for multiple applications.
This is a very lazy act, and you can easily spot that when you read the cover letters since they will have little to no remark or information about the specific descriptions of the job. Sometimes, they are just stuffed with keywords that will help them if you use an automated system like Applicant Tracking System (ATS). It reveals the little interest or motivation in the specific details of the job and may indicate how they will handle it too.
Ensure the Resumes Are Error-Free
The next on our list of resume screening tips is error-checking. Attention to detail and perfection is very important and is an essential quality of any job applicant or employee. Many a time, applicants find it hard to format their resumes correctly. Hence, they end up presenting crooked or unprofessional-looking resumes.
This is also a red flag because professionalism is a great quality that helps to get the job done. It indicates how far the candidate is willing to go to do a great job without the product looking amateurish. A resume with a format that is not standard or needs improvement does not show professionalism.
Furthermore, ensure that there are no errors, be it spelling, grammatical, etc., in the resumes or cover letters. They also go a long way in indicating the perfection and carefulness of the applicants. If a candidate does not take time to make a perfect resume or cover letter for their application, there is probably no way they will do the job better.
Use an Automated System for Resume Organization
Another major point in our resume screening tips is resume organization. At a time when you have many open job positions in your company, you will naturally receive a lot of applications. Managing these applications can be difficult since you may have to sort them, which could take hours or days.
Therefore, we recommend that you get an automated system. This system is called the Applicant Tracking System (ATS). It helps to sort resumes by looking for specific keywords in the application that indicate the job position the applicant applied for. Hence, you can go straight to reviewing the resume and move at a faster pace. With this system, you can also keep track of the disqualified, shortlisted and scheduled-for interview candidates for better management.
At Job Career Critic, we offer an affordable and better ATS than you will get in the market. Our system links all the applications to each job you post so you can manage them separately without needing keyword search or filtering. This is more effective and will eliminate false positives from using more keywords and false negatives from less usage in the application, a problem associated with many ATS software.
Take Note of Employment Dates
The last point in our resume screening tips list is that you note employment dates. Many a time, some job seekers practice job hopping – intentionally changing employment frequently. So, the time they spend per job will be very short. This may be because the candidate is trying to acquire experience in many companies in preparation for a bigger job. Also, it can be because the candidate is not interested in committing to a company yet, or at all.
Therefore, you need to take note of these dates and ask the candidate questions about them during the interview to know their plans. If the job requires someone willing to take the role for a long time and they are not done job-hopping, then they are not the right hire.
These resume screening tips will save you quality time during your hiring process and help you choose the right hire.
