As a recruiter, I've had my fair share of reviewing resumes. I've seen others glancing through one for less than 3 seconds before calling out their final judgement and discarding it in the reject pile. I couldn't help but shake my head in disbelief after learning the surface level criterias being imposed here.

School

  • Unknown school
  • Not top ranking
  • We don't hire from this school as their CS module is shallow

For the longest time, we outsourced the measurement of ability and aptitude to schools. We trust them to equip students with knowledge and skills that can be applied in the real world. This is particularly true for roles that we are not familiar with. We just blindly assume that if someone graduated from a reputable school, then they should be minimally qualified.

Why then do companies kept complaining that graduates are not well equipped for the real world? Does success in a role have any strong correlation to the school they graduated from?

Credential / Qualification / Job Title

  • No degree
  • No certification
  • This job has no relation to what this person studied in school
  • This person doesn't hold the same job title as this job

Have you ever asked why someone doesn't have a degree? Social, economic and diminished value plays a part in this. We see issues ranging from degree mills and people going with the flow just to get that piece of paper to qualify for jobs. Does education end after graduation? How do you measure learnability? And are job titles universal across the world? I'm sure we can do better than this.

Company

  • Unknown company with unknown practices
  • Just another "sweat shop" company
  • Just a small startup
  • Been in the company for that long without progression, must be mediocre

Some people join a company out of necessity. They have to put food on the table, even if the job is less than ideal. You're missing out on plenty of backstory and rationale behind their decision. To judge someone because they are not working in a reputable company is tasteless in my point of view.

Experience / Career Progression

  • Not linear enough
  • We need someone with 6 years experience, not 5
  • Overqualified

We live in a world that's constantly changing. These days, the degree of responsibility in a role expand to meet these needs. Why do we have to box someone based on linearity? And tell me. How exactly do you measure experience? If we are that shallow to believe that it can be measured quantitatively, why then are companies not hiring seniors with 20-30 years of experience?

Do any of these criteria matter? Can a piece of paper tell you anything about the human behind it? Be honest here.

I get it. These are criterias set by hiring managers, we don't know enough about the role, we're hiring at volume, so on and so forth. How then do we break free from the status quo if we're just going with the flow even though we know it doesn't make sense?

First, let's stop pretending that we know what we're doing when reviewing resumes. Setting filters for keywords, schools / credentials in our ATS is just a path to failure. For things to change, we have to get real and start asking questions.

What's the whole point of a resume? To provide us a vague information as to whether someone can fulfill the responsibilities of an open role. How do we remain objective during evaluation? By eliminating the shallow criterias we've been imposing all these time.

Make some effort to truly understand a role. What does it take to succeed? What are the key traits and skills required? Are we evaluating based on potentiality or a plug and play solution that checks all the boxes? Do we consider vertical over horizontal progression? What does X years of experience even mean? What's the depth that we're looking out for?

All these questions can't be answered through a resume alone. And I'm not expecting you to spend the whole day reviewing thousand of resumes in this meticulous manner either. How about removing resume from the equation? Sounds preposterous but hear me out.

If you advertise a role with the expectation that a qualified person fills it, then qualification can be simplified to a matter of having the potential to meet or exceed desired result(s) and outcome(s). Merit over pedigree. That's all there is to it.

By removing resumes from the equation, we are also removing assumptions and biasness in our evaluation. This can be replaced with skills and knowledge assessment upfront. Give people an opportunity to shine and showcase their abilities.

I urge companies to rethink their screening strategy. Make merit over pedigree a priority. You'll be surprised by all the hidden gems that you'll encounter, considering that you've been filtering them upfront through all these shallow criterias without giving them the slightest chance to show up and excel.