Hiring Process

YOU MAY HAVE heard the statistic that recruiters only spend seven seconds looking at each resume. The truth is a little more complicated. Experienced recruiters can often reject a resume in about 7-10 seconds. That’s because they begin by skimming for dealbreakers — do they meet the basic qualifications in the listing? But if a resume holds their interest past that seven seconds, they’ll spend a lot more time looking at it.

As with all things, you build skills by doing it more. If you hire infrequently, or live in a small community and have small applicant pools for each role, you’ll likely need to spend more time with each resume. But as you see more resumes, you’ll hone your skills and reduce the time you spend to screen out and screen in.

How Do I Sort Through The Resumes I Receive?

Gather all the resumes that applicants have submitted and go through them one by one. You don’t even need to look at the applicant’s name at this point, certainly not their address. Look first at the companies they’ve worked for — signshops? Ones you’ve heard of? Local ones? Big/small?

If there are no signshops in the company names, look further at the job titles listed beneath the companies. Many larger companies have internal graphics, signage or fabrication departments and individuals coming from these roles may be adept at thinking on their feet, translating for laymen and wearing multiple hats. For roles in customer service, finance or admin functions, you may relax your expectation of having worked at a similar company and rather look for similar-sized businesses or related industries.

Next, scan the duration of stays at the companies. We don’t want to be too uncharitable here, but if someone has stayed for three months each at 19 companies, yours is likely to be the next short stay. The exception is if they have gotten these roles through a temp agency or similar, in which case short stays are expected. The ability to stay in a role for three-plus years is in itself a qualification, implying some level of commitment, loyalty, decent attendance, ability to learn to do tasks, etc.

By this point in reviewing the resume, you should see something that makes you want to look further — some related role, company or lengthy tenure somewhere. If you want to know more, keep looking at this resume. But at this point, if you can see they’re not qualified — they’ve only worked for two restaurants as dishwashers and you’re looking for one year of experience in graphic design — there’s no need to look any further.

If you are still interested, now is the time to return to the top of the resume and review it in more detail, line by line. Is the candidate located within a reasonable commuting distance? If their address isn’t local, did they include a note or cover letter stating their intention to move to town? (Someone with the right experience who is moving to your city for the first time can be an amazing find.)

Do their jobs show career progression — taking on more responsibility, cross training or taking on management duties — or lateral moves where they just tried a bunch of different things without progressing?

Do the listed duties reflect that they will be experienced in the tasks you need them to do?

While screening for typos is important in a visual field, I recommend not getting too hung up on how ‘polished’ the resume looks. You’re looking for an employee for your signshop, not an expert resume writer, right? So have some flexibility and be willing to learn more, but also don’t waste time digging for detail to try to make someone who’s not a fit into a fit. If you’re tempted to do that, it’s probably because you’re…

Not Getting Enough Qualified Applicants?

A million factors impact hiring. The season of the year, the local, state and national economy, education and hiring trends, and most of all — random chance. The best long-term strategies for dealing with this inevitability are the following two:

1. Maintain enough flexibility to hire the perfect person when they come along, even if you don’t yet need them at that moment!
2. When you are hiring urgently because you just need a body and a set of hands ASAP, lower your standards for years of experience and take more chances, but be poised and prepared to move on quickly by terminating the new hire if it’s not working out.

But what do you do in the short term when you need someone qualified with the right experience, but you’re not finding them?

One option is to throw money at the problem by adding paid sponsorships to your job posting on Indeed, LinkedIn or other platforms so it will be shown to more job-seekers. The downside is that your ad will be shown to more job-seekers of all types, not just qualified ones. Sponsoring can lead to more people to reject, not always more people to interview.
Other options include these:

• Asking current employees to refer people they know or have worked with in the past who they feel would share your company’s values. A vote of confidence from a trusted worker takes care of some of the ‘vetting.’
• Considering whether you can raise the pay range listed in the ad, or include a pay range if you don’t have one listed already. Some applicants will skip over applying for a job if the pay doesn’t seem to match the market.
• Patience — you never know who just lost their job. Keep your job listing up-to-date and give it a few more weeks — more applicants will become available.

With these strategies, you can ensure that resume review doesn’t become a time suck and that you are pulling the very best resumes out of the stack. Next month, we’ll cover how to get to the bottom of candidate experience and make your company stand out with effective job interviews.