Please note this post originally appeared on The RecruitLoop Blog

Don’t worry. I know exactly what you’re thinking.

Surely in this day and age resumés are becoming obsolete! I mean who even has a CV these days anyway?

Gosh even we recently confessed that we hired our Head of Growth without ever looking at her resumé!

But for all those business owners and hiring managers out there working in organisations or industry sectors where LinkedIn profiles or social footprints may not be as relevant or as common as a good old hard copy CV, this one’s for you!

Now I can’t even begin to think of how many thousands of resumés I’ve scanned in my time. You do the math … 20 years … often up to 90 applications per job ad …

OK stop. That’s a lot of trees (yep – even today the majority of recruiters and hiring managers still like to print out a candidate’s resumé. Go ahead and ask them!)

So how do the pros review the barrage of CVs after the tsunami of applications hit their inboxes?

The Pile Splitter

I interviewed a recruiter many years ago who placed people into call centre roles. She would be inundated with CVs for every role she advertised. Apparently her theory was quite simple. Each day she would wait for all the applications to come in. She’d make a pile of CVs on her desk and then split the pile in two. She only screened the bottom half and she dumped top half straight in the shredder bin. [In case you’re wondering … I didn’t hire her].

Residential Bias

Many hiring managers are obsessed with knowing where a candidate lives. This is why most recruiters will typically remove the candidate’s address from a CV before sharing it with their client.

Oh … she lives there! There’s no way he’d travel in from that far!

If somebody wants a job and they’re prepared for a long commute, then please don’t judge someone on where they live. Unfortunately because so many candidates put their address at the top of their resumé, residential bias (as I like to call it) is rife!

To Whom It May Concern:

I have to admit I have been guilty of this one myself. There were times when I would be swamped with CVs and cover letters. If I had made it clear in my job ad that all resumés should be addressed to Paul Slezak, then if I received a cover letter that said “To whom it may concern”, well unfortunately I didn’t even read the cover letter let alone the CV behind it.

That’s what I would call resumé skimming at its fastest!

Say Cheese!

Right up there with ‘residential bias’, are employers (and recruiters too!) looking at a candidate’s photo (if they’ve decided to include one) and letting a mug shot lead the decision making process.

Assuming the majority reading this blog post aren’t recruiting for a modelling agency or a prime time television network, then a candidate’s photo should be the least of your worries.

Virgo or Sagittarius?

If it’s included in the resumé, a candidate’s date of birth is also somewhere the hiring manager’s eyes will gravitate pretty early on.

I used to think this was related to age discrimination. But over the years I have learned that quite often it’s not the year of birth that’s being scrutinised at all. It’s actually more the day and month.

Believe it or not there are people out there who build their teams based entirely on ‘zodiacal compatibility’! There you go – no need to even read the CV. Better yet forget engaging a recruiter! Just hire consulting astrologer!

Now on a More Serious Note …

Whenever I lecture graduates and job seekers on how to create a compelling CV, one of the first things I tell them is that a recruiter or hiring manager will make a decision in the first 10 – 15 seconds of looking at a CV as to whether or not a candidate is suitable.

It’s true.

So now looking at it from your perspective, if you’re making a judgement call within 10 – 15 seconds, what should you be looking out for in a candidate’s CV?

In many previous blog posts and e-books I have stressed the importance of distinguishing between a candidate’s ability to get a job and their ability to do the job and ideally excel in it.

Typically during the resumé reviewing process, your focus is on the getting part. It’s during the screening and interviewing stages where your focus should shift more to the doing (and excelling) components – and we have stacks of information about that.

Relevant Employment History

Where has the candidate worked? Not just in what companies but in what capacity? You can get a very quick idea as to how suitable their previous work experience has been.

Gaps in Dates

Cast your eye quickly down the work experience or employment history section and ensure the dates flow logically. But if you detect a gap in the chronology please don’t write the candidate off immediately. Instead make a note to flag it with them if you speak to them. They may well have a very valid reason for not having worked for a specific period of time.

Required Qualifications

Some roles require set qualifications. Without having to delve into what specific subjects they studied, you can quickly skim to see when and where they obtained their degree.

Responsibilities and Achievements

Has the candidate just listed their responsibilities from their previous roles? Or have they also included a list of achievements associated with them? Whilst a list of duties will once again help with the job getting assessment piece, seeing what they actually achieved (going beyond the job description) will help assess the doing part.

Personal Accomplishments

I have always placed a strong emphasis on this section of a candidate’s CV (if they’ve included it). Life experiences can give you a great snapshot of what they’re like outside work.

I used to do a lot of graduate recruitment and often from an academic and work experience perspective the hundreds of CVs would all start to look the same. But if I noticed under ‘personal achievements’ that a candidate had taken part in a 10-day Vipassana meditation course, had built a raft with a group of friends and spent a month canoeing down a river in South America, or had successfully organised a major fundraising event, I felt that those candidates may well have more to offer than those who just ticked the stock standard boxes.

Finally I just want to highlight that I am definitely a firm believer in looking at a candidate’s social footprint alongside their CV. And for anyone I ever hired personally to work in any of my teams, I never even took their resumé into the first interview since first and foremost that meeting was all about assessing cultural suitability.

But if you’re being swamped with candidate applications, it’s important that you can quickly sort the wheat from the chaff.