Screening Resumes
Encyclopedia
Screening resumes is the process of sorting resumes to disqualify candidates using successively more detailed examinations of the resumes. The objective is to locate the most qualified candidates for an open job. While some of this can be done with the aid of automation and computers, there are still skills and techniques that help quickly eliminate unqualified candidates.

Introduction

One of the first meaningful decision points of a recruitment
Recruitment
Recruitment refers to the process of attracting, screening, and selecting qualified people for a job. For some components of the recruitment process, mid- and large-size organizations often retain professional recruiters or outsource some of the process to recruitment agencies.The recruitment...

 effort is the evaluation of skills, knowledge and abilities for a given job candidate. The most common form of this evaluation is the screening of resumes.

Process

The objective of screening resumes is to eliminate candidates that to not meet the job requirements. Today the act of screening a resume may generally be divided into three steps, the first pass or scanning for keywords
Keywords
Keywords are the words that are used to reveal the internal structure of an author's reasoning. While they are used primarily for rhetoric, they are also used in a strictly grammatical sense for structural composition, reasoning, and comprehension...

, the second pass which includes reading the resume
Résumé
A résumé is a document used by individuals to present their background and skillsets. Résumés can be used for a variety of reasons but most often to secure new employment. A typical résumé contains a summary of relevant job experience and education...

 to evaluate the candidate against the job requirements and the final pass, a full review of the resume including a subjective qualitative review of the candidates job history. Each step requires a more detailed review of the resume.

Keywords

The resume screening process presumes a well written job description
Job description
A job description is a list that a person might use for general tasks, or functions, and responsibilities of a position. It may often include to whom the position reports, specifications such as the qualifications or skills needed by the person in the job, or a salary range...

. From this job description, 3–5 carefully chosen keywords are selected. These keywords are used to narrow down a large pool of candidates to a more manageable set of resumes that will be read in more detail.

The keywords selected are derived from required skills or activities in the job description. To minimize the number of desirable candidates dropped in this first step, consider using synonyms and closely related terms in addition to the keywords selected.

This step of the process can often be aided by computers. For example, if you have a resume database, these keywords are the search queries used to find potential candidates in the database.

Further, this step is sometimes delegated to a junior person who can be trained to look for keywords and perform the initial sort.

Evaluation

Once a resume has been initially screened for keywords, it needs a more careful review. This second pass is designed to verify some of the second order criteria of the job description are met. For instance, level of education, years of experience required by the position, salary range and current location. Other functions of this evaluation include a closer look at job functions performed by the candidate and comparing them to the job description.

This phase often requires a more in depth understanding of the job description
Job description
A job description is a list that a person might use for general tasks, or functions, and responsibilities of a position. It may often include to whom the position reports, specifications such as the qualifications or skills needed by the person in the job, or a salary range...

 and requirements. For instance to determine relevant years of experience, the reviewer must add the number of years at the relevant jobs to come up the years experience. It can often be a judgment call on which parts of a job history are relevant to a job search. This means the person performing this step must have a suitable depth of understanding about the job description and requirements for the position.

Qualitative review

Resumes that reach this step of the process are from candidate that meet many of the requirements of the job description. This final pass is to examine the more subtle subjective qualities of the candidate. The objective is remove candidates with red flags that could mean potential job fraud
Job fraud
Job fraud refers to fraudulent or deceptive activity or representation on the part of an employee or prospective employee toward an employer. It is not to be confused with employment fraud, where an employer scams job seekers or fails to pay wages for work performed. There are several types of job...

and to separate the top candidates from the remaining resumes.

Resume Red Flags

There are a number of red flags when looking at resumes that should, at the very least, be noted and questioned as part of any phone screen with the candidate. Some of these red flags are easy to spot such as gaps in employment, job hopping, multiple moves to different states, using years instead of months/years for employment history and noting a college and degree program without indicating graduation. Others still are more subtle, like a significant drop in responsibility or a completely new career direction. While there are many valid reasons for some of these red flags, it should generate follow up questions if all other qualities of the resume are suitable for moving to further contact with the candidate.

Other Factors

Other factors is a broad term that is somewhat subjective when it comes to reviewing resumes. Here are a couple of examples that may help give one candidate an edge over another in the review process.
  • Does the candidate have a history of advancement including more responsibility and challenge in each subsequent position?
  • Does the candidate have experience working at a company of similar size and resource?
  • Does the candidate have the correct industry experience?
  • If this person applied directly for the position, would it be a significant drop in responsibility or challenge?
  • Is the person over qualified? Are they willing to accept a much lower salary?


These other factors are best used to further evaluate candidates already deemed to meet the basic qualification. They serve to initially prioritize the next phase of the recruitment process, which is to make initial contact with the candidates.
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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