Resume Screening For Recruiters And HR: Full Guide

In a job market that is as competitive as ever, it is essential to have a process in place for screening resumes quickly and efficiently. By using resume screening, recruiters and HR professionals can save time and energy while still finding the best candidates for the job. But what exactly is resume screening, and how does it work? Keep reading to find out.

What Is Resume Screening?

Resume screening is the process of reviewing CVs to identify candidates who are qualified for a particular job. This can be done manually or with the help of resume screening software. Resume screening is an important part of the recruitment process because it helps to save time and energy by narrowing down the pool of candidates to those who are the best fit for the job. For a detailed understanding of job roles and their specific requirements, check out our article on the job description of an assistant accountant.

Significance of Resume Screening

Screening in recruitment takes an enormous part of the workday. With so many worthy job applicants applying for each open position every day, it can be difficult to sort through all of the CVs manually. This is where resume screening comes in. By using resume screening, recruiters and HR professionals can save time and energy while still finding the best candidates for the job.

Main Steps in Resume Screening

Many recruiters know that candidates who are interested in a job embellish their resume. So how to screen resumes to get to the bottom of the truth?

To select the most worthy candidates, pay attention to the following points in a resume screening process:

The purpose. It is good if the job seeker specifically and clearly describes the position of interest (several positions) and indicates salary expectations. Such a person knows what, how, and for what price they are ready to do.

Number of previous jobs. A large number of jobs is not always an advantage. Frequent job changes may indicate a number of negative aspects: the candidate's low competence, inability to work in a team, and so on. The selection of resumes according to this criterion, in a sense, helps to identify irresponsible applicants.

Work experience. It is important to pay attention to whether the candidate's career growth can be traced. If so, then this is a huge advantage, which indicates high competence.

Education. Often, the level of education can say little about the professional skills of a candidate. But you can, for example, pay attention to the name of the educational institution. Candidates often note additional education in their resumes - all kinds of training, courses, and seminars. Here it is important to find an education that matches your vacancy and was completed at most 3-4 years ago. This information will also help in assessing the candidate's ability and motivation to learn.

Skills and abilities, their compliance with the requirements of the vacancy. At this stage, it is important to pay attention to the style of presentation of information in the resume, and the presence of professional terminology. The priority is conciseness, specificity, and clearly stated facts, without exaggeration, and excessive self-praise.

For more insights on enhancing your recruitment strategy, explore our article on how to use LinkedIn for recruitment.

Personal data. Check the age, place of residence, and marital status. Such information cannot be decisive but is important when candidates are selected based on resumes for certain vacancies. Checking the profile on social networks is a method that allows you to get more complete information about the candidate, their interests, etc.

After studying all the above data, it is important to conduct a final assessment of the resume - to conclude whether the candidate is suitable for a particular position. If you have a positive impression of the applicant, but they don’t meet the requirements of the vacancy, it would be rational to keep the profile - to save their contact details in case a suitable position appears in the company.

All these recommendations will make your resume screening process faster and more efficient.

Manual Screening vs. Screening Software

How are resumes screened? There are two main ways to screen resumes: manually or with the help of resume screening software. Each method has its own set of pros and cons that should be considered before making a decision.

Manual Screening

Pros:

-Allows you to get a feel for each candidate's personality and writing style

-Gives you a chance to ask follow-up questions about specific experience or qualifications

-Can be done relatively quickly if you only have a few resumes to review

Cons:

-Takes up a lot of time if you have many CVs to review

-Can be difficult to compare apples to apples when each CV is formatted differently

-May be biased if you have personal preferences about certain qualifications or experience

Screening Software

Pros:

-Saves time by automating the process of reviewing resumes

-May overlook qualified candidates if they do not have the right keywords in their resume   -Can be customized to fit your specific needs

Cons:

-May eliminate some qualified candidates due to discrepancies in format

-Provides data-driven results that are easy to compare

-You will still need to manually review some CVs

Tools for Automating the Screening of Your Resume                        

Screening process in recruitment is a real routine task. But how resume screening software works?

Usually, resume screening software works by scanning resumes and comparing them against a database of pre-determined criteria. The software then ranks each CV based on how well it matches up with the criteria and produces a list of candidates who are the best fit for the job. However, as we have mentioned above, this isn’t always a good option since the software can miss out on CVs containing no keywords for the AI.

Therefore, an ATS is a best-fit tool preferred by the majority of recruiters! The applicant tracking system is a software application that helps businesses automate their hiring process by tracking job applicants through every stage of recruiting, from initial contact to final hire. Many ATSs come with built-in search functions that allow you to quickly find candidates who meet your specific criteria.

Let us tell you more about Axterior recruitment platform. Axterior is a professional recruitment platform that allows companies and recruitment teams to source, manage, and hire the best talents with less time and effort, grow their talent pools, and improve their ROI on recruitment.  

The top benefits of Axterior are:

• Collaborative hiring
• Automated communication
• Fast candidates sourcing
• Feasible jobs management
• Detailed performance analytics
• Reduced cost and time per hire, as a great outcome!

How To Use Axterior for Screening?

The primary benefit of Axterior is easy-to-use automation. First, you can look for candidates on your sources (f.e., Linkedin) and add their profiles to your database through a Chrome Extension. When the candidates’ information is in your database, it’s much easier to get a general view of all the candidates and sort them by skills, position, location, etc.

As you can see, this is a simplified screening of resume that saves time but also ensures a lower chance of error.

Second, Axterior is an extremely convenient feature - resume preview. It saves much time for the recruiters. You don’t have to download each CV and open it. You can just preview and get all the information quickly.

Such a combined (50% - manual, 50% - automated) approach to the CV screening process is much more beneficial than simple screening software. You can accelerate some routine tasks, but you won’t miss out on talented candidates due to settings imperfections. After such a thorough screening, you may be confident that the person you invite for the interview is a suitable and qualified candidate.

Get inspired on the essential preparation steps for the interview as a recruiter.

Conclusion

Screening resumes is an important part of any recruitment process because it helps save time while still finding qualified candidates. There are different ways to screen resumes. Each method has its own set of pros and cons that should be considered before making a decision. No matter which CV screening method you choose, make sure that your process is efficient, accurate, and fair.