Ok so I may have made a strongly worded post about recruiters reviewing every resume.
Some of y’all were not pleased 😆
SO – I decided to tackle this topic once and for all! SHOULD recruiters read every resume? Eh…. maybe a skim. Brief review. But at the very least…
FAIR CONSIDERATION.
Now what does “fair consideration” look like? Honestly it can be different based on so many factors. What kinds of tools the recruiter has access to. Volume of roles and applications. Workload. Business needs. So. Many. Variables.
Next week we’ll tackle some of these in Part 2 focused on recruiters, but for this week, let’s talk about what job seekers should know.
Anecdotal data from years in the industry and talking to MANY recruiters has taught me that the number of “qualified” applicants is much smaller than the number of ACTUAL applicants. Most sources report somewhere between 10-25% on average are candidates that we can actually move forward with. One. In. Ten. At best? Maybe one in FOUR. Now you may ask yourself “gee if the odds are that bad, why bother looking at all??” Here’s why:
Several years ago I was working on a highly specialized role. This person was going to stand up a body of work that had literally never been done in this org before. The industry was one that had a high number of contractors, and so finding folks who would even consider full time (vs consulting) was already a challenge. Throw in a few other non-negotiables involving government contracts and I had myself a purple squirrel hunt.
At the time, I had an employee who was in charge of reviewing the resumes. Every week I would ask for a pipeline status, and every week it was “I’m searching – here’s a list of prospects” When asked about direct applicants, I was told there weren’t any good ones, and we’d never find someone who directly applied. After a painful offer decline and a few other near misses, I decided to check for myself.
Y’all. Why did I open my ATS to find 279 unveiwed applicants??
So I did what any annoyed recruiting leader would do. I poured myself a drink, turned on some reality TV, and got to work after hours. It took me about 2 hours, but I reviewed them all. Every single one. Yes, there were lots of immediate no’s. But there were also 10 highly qualified and INTERESTED applicants. That’s right – approximately 3% of the resumes I reviewed were worth forwarding to the hiring manager.
The HM decided to interview the top 5 (further scrutiny based on Preferred Qualifications) and we did final rounds with 4 of them. Thankfully we hired one of those applicants.
A stellar hire I would have completely missed had I not done my damn job and reviewed folks who had clearly indicated their interest in our role.
THAT is just one example of why I don’t sleep on applicants. Ever. Too much gold to be mined in that ATS y’all!
So what does this mean for job seekers? Two big things:
Let go of what you cannot confirm
You have no way of knowing how many applicants actually applied. Furthermore, you can’t know how many of those are even qualified. So don’t let high “applicant” counts on LinkedIn scare you away. That’s not even accurate data – let alone the smaller percentage of folks who can even be considered!
You ALSO have no way of knowing how the recruiter on the other end does their job. Do they rely on knockout questions? Do they trust their ranking system, or do they do a keyword search? Unless a recruiter tells you specifically this or that is how they operate? Don’t assume.
Let go of what you cannot control
There may be 100 other well qualified applicants. Can you do anything about it? The recruiter might suck at their job and leave your application to the whims of a shitty boolean string. Can you fix it? Nope. So why sweat it?
What you CAN control, is the information you put in front of the hiring team. Ideally your resume leave no doubt that you meet the qualifications and then some. If you run into clear “yes/no” required questions, there’s a very good possibility those are knockout questions – saying “no” may be a one way ticket to rejectionville. It MIGHT make sense to spend that precious job search energy on roles you’re fully qualified for.
You can ALSO engage with recruiters at your favorite companies on LinkedIn and other forms of social media. Unsure of how Company A does this or that? ASK SOMEONE! Don’t take bullshit “guidance” from cotton candy career coaches – go straight to the source and get the truth.
Not every recruiter has the bandwidth to reply to every message, but reading up on their careers pages, talking to friends/colleagues who work at those companies and following the hiring authorities on social media will get you a lot further than stressing over what you can’t confirm – or control.
Check out this week’s video HERE
