The world is full of hundreds of thousands of Job Seekers and most of them are technically qualified to do the job. But you don’t want just anyone. You’re on the hunt for your ideal employee. So, to that end, you’ve put up job ads in the best place to attract the best candidates. The reward for your efforts is hundreds of great looking CVs filling your inbox and falling off of the piles you’ve stacked on your desk. Now what?
Well now the job of gathering, reviewing, sorting begins. This can be a daunting task but it doesn’t have to be. Here are some strategies for getting to the bottom of the pile and coming up with the list of candidates to interview.
What do you REALLY need?
First, you need to decide what you’re looking for. Yes you’ve written something like that for your job ad but take a closer look at it now. For this phase of your hiring process, you need to use the list of skills and attitudes that you created for your job ad to create a grading system for the CVs. For example, you’ve stated in your ad for an Office Clerk that word processing and bookkeeping skills are required. Well, which of these skills is most important? Do you hire the person with the most bookkeeping experience over the person with the most word processing experience or the other way around? You need to decide now how much “weight” you’re going to give each skill and attitude.
Take a Systematic Approach
Use a clear point system to grade each CV as objectively as possible. There’s some room for subjectivity but taking a systematic approach minimizes it. You want to be as objective as possible when going through the pile of CVs so that you’re not needlessly influenced by extra information, vague information, or employment gaps in a CV. Here’s how it works.
You’ve decided that word processing skills are more important to the job of Office Clerk than bookkeeping skills. So, you’re going to award 2 points for every year of word processing experience that the candidate has and 1 point for every year of bookkeeping experience that they have. That’s pretty objective. You’ve also decided that leadership and creative problem solving are very important so you’re going to award points on a scale of 1-5 to candidates whose CVs illustrate these traits. One point for “not so much”, 3 points for “sort of”, and 5 points for “definitely”, etc.
This is the subjective side of the grading system. You can leave this aspect of the system as subjective as you like or you can delve into exactly what you define as, in this case, “Leadership”. It’s up to you. Write these scales down and photocopy them on small pieces of paper. You’re going to use those papers to help you grade each CV for sorting.
Grading the CVs
Now, let’s say that Sarah has applied at your company for the job as Office Clerk. She has 3 years experience word processing and 2 years as a junior bookkeeper. She also chaired the charitable committee with a previous employer.
Robert has also applied for the job of Office Clerk. Robert has 4 years bookkeeping and 1 year using word processing software. Robert was also on the team that helped implement the new accounting software in his previous company. Now use your grading system to rate these two candidates.
Word Processing
Bookkeeping
Leadership
Total
Sarah
6 points
2 points
5 points
13 points
Robert
2
4
3
9 points
Here you can see that Sarah scored higher and you can safely move her CV higher up on the pile than Robert’s.
By deciding in advance what your priorities are and sticking to them with a specific grading system, you’ll be able to get through that pile of CVs in no time. Also, when you have other employees and you’re involving them in the vetting process, you’ll all have a common tool to use when sorting and comparing CVs. There will be fewer arbitrary, personal or subjective decisions made and the whole process will be far more clear cut and workable.