Resume screening: A flawed process?

Rural Ramblings

There is a TV advert on right now from the recruitment site Indeed. A very busy boss is very happy that he can add questions that sift out resumes that he doesn’t want to see. Including things like job title and five years experience.

I see the point of being able to sift out applications that are clearly not suitable but let’s just examine that concept. Automated resume screening is not new. Bots will look for key words in resumes for them to make it in the inbox of a real person.

Now to digress, back in the late 1970s I wanted to switch career away from the bank I’d been working at for five years. I was passing my exams and well on my way to moving up the ladder. Except it was a ladder I was quickly losing enthusiasm for. I started applying for jobs that I fancied from ads in the local newspaper. No such thing as resumes then. Either you wrote, by hand, a good legible letter, or you got a form in the mail to fill in.

One job I liked the look of was as a trainee estimator for a national scaffolding company. I had zero experience of construction and said so in the letter. However, I got an interview and the job, which led to a 20-year odd career in construction management, including running my own company with up to 60 employees before shifting into another career, again, at the start, with zero experience in the sector. My point here is that now my letter/resume would never have made it past the robotic screeners. When I’m hiring I make it a point to read EVERY resume.

Human beings are adaptable and can change careers easily given the opportunity. If a recruiter is looking for say, using Indeed’s ad as an example, a project manager, putting in a screen of five years experience and the specific job title takes out all of those with less, even slightly less time in the job. Also, it screens out those that may, for example, have been working in a project management team and be looking to move into management.

As an employer, you want the right person for the job, therefore, you should be prepared to invest more of your time to find that person. To me, that means looking at every resume. It is insane to me that recruiters are usually looking for someone who is already doing the job that they are applying for. Humans excel at thinking and working out of the box if they are allowed to. Yes, there will be failures but there will be successes too. Recruiters take note, your IT procedures may be screening out good candidates and that’s costing you money and denying your clients the talent they seek. Sometimes you need to get back to the basics.