October 11, 2022

Resume Screening: The Ultimate Guide for Small Businesses

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Resume Screening

Only one-third of recruiters believe job seekers are genuine about their abilities, while the remaining 85% feel candidates hype their abilities on their resumes.

Resume screening saves recruiters time throughout the hiring process and allows new workers to be onboarded more quickly. Whether you screen resumes physically or with tools, utilizing the best strategies will help you find the most qualified candidates. 

What is Resume Screening?

By restricting the number of qualified candidates, resume screening plays an important aspect in locating the ideal applicant for a position. Recruiters either manually evaluate resumes or use technology to do so.

Recruiters analyze each resume individually in manual screening, whereas software-based resume screening uses artificial intelligence methods to scan resumes for pre-determined criteria. Resume screening is a simple method for eliminating unqualified applicants from the application process and shortlisting candidates for interviews.

What Are the Reasons for the Widespread Use of Resume Screening?

1. It Significantly Reduces the Recruiting Process 

A significantly larger number of candidates frequently implies extended hiring periods. Companies are looking for new techniques to screen out unwanted applicants in order to speed up the hiring process, including resume screening. This significantly decreases time to hire and time to fill, allowing you to enroll the ideal candidate much faster.

2. It Narrows Down a Vast Pool of Candidates 

Finding the ideal candidate amid a large pool of applications can be difficult. Resume screening allows you to eliminate unwanted individuals, leaving just those who appear to be best fitted for the position.

3. It Allows You to Evaluate the Success of Job Postings 

Recruiters can also decide whether a job posting is successful or reasonable for the company's needs by screening resumes. For example, if none of the resumes you check contain the abilities 

specified in your job posting, it may be a hint that you need to rethink your expectations.

How to Screen Resumes?

Most recruiters utilize an application checklist to sort prospects into categories such as "must-sees" and "potential interviews."

A checklist is a simple approach to searching for keywords in resumes. Some candidates will utilize meaningless keywords in order to stand out. 

Responsibilities are also taken into consideration during the recruitment process. A quick resume screening by a smart recruiter will look for figures and indicators of development, such as making 100 videos with over 1,000,000 views in two months.' To stand out from the pack, candidates should showcase genuine tangible accomplishments.

When two or more opportunities are open, people may be more qualified for a job for which they did not apply. Calling in a candidate for future interest in other job openings is an excellent recruitment strategy and resume screening procedure.

These are some simple resume screening ideas; however, everyone has their resume screening procedure. Follow these top tactics for successful recruiting if you're seeking fresh ideas.

1. Make A Specific Job Posting

The more specific you can be when describing the position's functions and responsibilities, the more likely you are to attract the top candidates. To limit the number of candidates, list all abilities, software expertise, and years of experience required in the job description.

Rewarding recruiting begins with you, and a clear set of requirements will help candidates decide whether it is worth their time to apply or not.

2. Analyze Any Employment Gaps

If you notice a gap of more than a month between jobs while scanning applications, ask the candidate to explain why. Some people have valid reasons for gaps, such as military duty or parental leave. However, before recruiting, you must ensure that your candidate is committed to long-term employment.

3. Set high expectations from the start

If you find typos or obvious flaws in a resume when screening it, discard it before continuing. This is a clear indication that the candidate is not detail-oriented. 

A CV that seems to be copied and pasted shows that the person is not genuinely interested in the job vacancy. It can also be interpreted as a warning against job-hopping or tossing resumes into the wind in the hope that one sticks.

Reading a resume should be straightforward. It should clearly and simply summarise relevant experience and credentials. Do not spend your time examining resumes that were created with little consideration or effort.

4. Job Resumes

Resumes may include information on interests, volunteer opportunities, and trips. A professional Resume should only include credentials, not hobbies or interests. All non-professional resumes with no relevant work experience should be rejected during resume screening.

5. Make Cultural Fit A Priority

Even candidates with outstanding qualifications on their resumes may struggle in person. In your search, always prioritize communication skills, leadership, and cooperation.

If a candidate is unable to cooperate with others, you may find yourself publishing another job offering and evaluating resumes sooner than you would want.

6. Prioritize Quality Over Quantity

More positions on a resume do not imply a more unique background. This is most certainly a symptom of job-hopping, especially if the individual appears to change jobs every few months.

A candidate who has worked for a company for numerous years has obviously prioritized long-term growth.

Challenges Faced While Resume Screening

For many years, resume screening was a time-consuming and labor-intensive manual activity performed by a single recruiting manager or recruiter. This, of course, creates several problems in the search for top employees.

Let's take a look at the well-known challenges of resume screening.

1. Personal Experience of the Recruiter

A recruiter is assigned to assess applications and bring in the finest applicants, yet they are frequently unfamiliar with the available position. Detailed IT roles can be more difficult to screen than general managerial positions.

A recruiter can bring in the wrong prospects simply because they do not completely know the job's needs and credentials.

2. It's Time to Hire

Qualified individuals will receive several offers. The average time to recruit is 30 days, but your top choice might be taken by another organization that is quicker in presenting a position.

Shortening the period between resume screening and job offers benefits both you and the firm. Get ahead of the curve and employ exceptional candidates before it's too late.

3. Volume

The average number of applicants for a new job is 250! Imagine you spend 10 minutes reviewing each resume in depth, which averages to more than 41 hours of resume screening. After reading so many applications, anyone would become exhausted.

What makes it much more challenging is that more than three-quarters of the candidates will be irrelevant or lack the necessary qualifications.

4. Getting Settled too Quickly

Sometimes a recruiter might locate what appears to be the ideal Resume towards the top of the pile and call them in the hopes that they would work out. This frequently excludes other applicants who may be more suited but happen to be further down the list.

This is one of the disadvantages of accepting and reviewing resumes on a rolling basis rather than waiting for applications to be filed before assessing resumes.

5. Recruiting Quality

Quality of hire is simply a measure of how much value a recruit may provide to your business over time. Although there is no set method for evaluating quality, recruiters recognize that this factor is important to think about when reviewing resumes.

However, this can be problematic, especially because the key indicators required to fulfill these criteria aren't clearly identified by looking solely at a candidate's resume.

6. Experience of Recruiters in Every Field

It is difficult for recruiters to get information outside of their field. Recruiters frequently review resumes for multiple industries. 

A recruiter in an organization, for example, may be screening profiles for marketing, sales, IT, and engineering positions. We cannot expect them to know all of the verticals, especially if they are technical. This frequently results in the wrong profile being shortlisted for the wrong position.

In such cases, the recruiting manager is frequently in charge of most of the screening. The time spent by recruiters on such initial screening is completely ineffective.

Wrapping It Up

Traditional hiring is similar to a cone. It begins with a large group of candidates about whom we know little and concludes with one person about whom we want to know a lot. Resume screening is an important step in the shortlisting process.

Recruiters can use Resume screening to narrow down a big list of qualified applicants, advancing the top candidates to the next step of the recruiting process, which is generally an interview or an invitation to complete skills testing. It can also assist companies in determining whether their job posting is attracting qualified candidates.

Although there are obstacles associated with the procedure, screening resumes boosts the possibility of a company's time-to-hire and time-to-fill, making the complex hiring process manageable.

Stuck with screening hundreds of resumes? Save your valuable hours by creating pre-employment assessments within a few clicks!

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. How do Multinational Businesses Check Resumes?

Most medium and large organizations utilize ATSs (Applicant Tracking Systems) to collect and track all applicants. When someone applies, their resume and application are entered into a database rather than being sent to someone's desk or email.

2. Do Recruiters Review All Resumes?

Recruiters pick 1 out of 100 resumes (at least for large organizations) based on information from the hiring manager and transfer them to hiring managers and interviewees for additional screening. Furthermore, recruiters do not have the time to go through each and every CV.

About The Author:

shasi

With Flair in Human Resource study and an Avid HR Reader, Writing and traveling are food for her soul. She is currently studying French at Alliance Française de Delhi. Avneet has also done double bachelors in English Honours and Education.

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