Why Your Business Should Be Looking Closer at Resumes

Sorting through resumes is a time-consuming process that is often far less fruitful than most would like. In truth, though, it’s also one of the most important things that your business can do. If you want the best candidates for the job, you’ll want to consider these three reasons to look closer at your incoming resumes.

Getting Past Fluff

The truth is that many resumes are filled with rather useless fluff that only serves to satisfy certain keyword requirements used by online resume systems. If you’re looking for a good candidate, you have to see if there’s more than fluff to the resume. That means actively parsing what’s on the paper and figuring out if the language used actually shows the skills and experience that you need. It’s important to continue to look closely at resumes to determine if the candidates can actually be an asset to your business or if the candidate in question is simply very good at making a resume.

Skills over Keywords

The skills section on a resume is sadly under-represented when it comes to finding good candidates. If you’re looking for someone with auto heavy rigid vehicle training, for example, you might not find them without reading your resumes a little more closely. In many cases, it can be hard to find skills simply because the candidate didn’t use the right keywords for which you are searching. Looking a little more closely can reveal a wealth of information that can help you to find the candidates that are best to fill your open positions.

Understanding Your Candidates

It’s also a good idea to start looking more closely at your resumes to get an idea of how a potential candidate’s experiences might bring something new to your company. You don’t just need to look at job history, either—time spent at a university or in a volunteer position might give your company a new perspective that it needs. If you just go by the keywords on a resume, you very well might miss out on the kinds of experiences that are much harder to quantify.

Try to give every resume the attention it deserves. While there will always be a few that you can safely ignore, pay attention to the rest. If you read through the submitted resumes carefully, you might be able to find a few perfect candidates who might otherwise get lost in the larger pile of resume submissions.