Resume Screening Tips: Find the Right Candidates in a Flash

Let’s imagine you run a startup or an expansion stage business. Your revenue is growing quickly and it’s time to scale the company.

So, you post a job opening on the web and utilize your network to source candidates for the position.

Then the resumes come rolling in. Before long, you have a stack of them on your desk. You’re hoping the person you want to hire is in there, but you don’t want to miss them among the many others that may not be qualified.

This is a pretty common problem for smaller businesses without a dedicated recruiting team. Particularly in the early stages of a company’s growth, the responsibility of culling through stacks of resumes often falls squarely on the founder or management team’s shoulders.

So, where do you start?

If you have a large number of applicants (lucky you!), the best way to screen resumes and gain perspective on your candidate pool is to perform the resume quick scan. By taking a brief look at each resume and examining it for specific qualities, you’ll be able to determine your top candidates, who you may consider, and (sometimes most importantly) who you will not.

What should you be looking for? ERE.net contributor Tyler Abernethy points out the key components of the quick scan on his blog.

Key components of a quick resume scan:

• Right type and amount of work experience for the role
• Proper educational, certification or licensing requirements
• Correct technical background and skills (if necessary)
• Current location of the candidate (in case of relocation)
• Software efficiency
• Names/industries of previous employers
• Dates of employment

During the quick scan, place candidates in separate piles (or files) so you can continue to prioritize each one during a deeper dive of the resumes later in the process. For example, you may label them “A” or “B” piles based on each candidate’s background for the role, or “Yes,” “Maybe” and “No” based on whether you’d like to interview each candidate.

Once you go through that initial scan, you should have a much better idea of the interested applicants’ backgrounds and the strength of your overall candidate pool. You can then take a more thorough look at the resumes and cover letters of your top applicants to make sure that you’re moving forward with the ones you and your management team are most interested in.

Taking a closer look

Of course, the resume quick scan is just one step in a sometimes arduous process. But there are a few other methods you can try to further sift through the remaining pile of applicants and make sure you identify the best fit for the job.

For example, Kathy Legg at The Recruiters Lounge suggests trying a scoring system:

• Decide what you really need: Use your job description to identify the key skills and attributes that applicants must possess. Write those skills and attributes on a piece of paper and keep it handy as you read through each resume.
• Take a systematic approach: Award points on a scale of 1-5 for each relevant skill or attribute. For example, you may score a college degree that applies specifically to the job with two points, and relevant software experience with three or four points. The scoring system really depends on the skills that you decided are most important for the job.
• Grade the resumes: Once you’ve determined the scoring system, quickly grade each resume by assigning points to each applicant’s skills and experience. As you go, organize the resumes based on cumulative point totals.

Legg’s method is just another way to remove subjectivity from the resume reviewing process, which ultimately cuts down on the time you might waste paring down your candidate pool. Mashable’s Josh Catone wrote a guest post for American Express’s OPEN Forum that suggests a few web-based hiring tools that can help small businesses too.

Time is money, so establishing an efficient and effective process for digging through that stack of resumes is key. That’s especially true for smaller businesses that don’t have a dedicated team of recruiters or an Applicant Tracking System to help manage the process.

The quick scan should help determine your top applicants and allow you to move forward with interviews. Then, the real hiring fun begins.