Employers

Evaluating Resumes

A resume is evidence of what someone has done, filtered through how well they write about themselves. Useful, but only if you know which parts to trust.

The short answer

  • Read for evidence of what the person did, not for what their team or employer did. The distinction is the single most useful reading skill in screening.
  • Decide your criteria before you open the first resume, or the first resume becomes the criteria.
  • Several traditional red flags, including employment gaps and short tenures, are weak signals and screen out capable people.
  • Presentation quality mostly measures how well someone writes about themselves, which matters for some roles and is irrelevant to many.

What to read for

Ownership. "The team migrated the platform" and "I led the migration of the platform" are different claims, and strong candidates are usually specific about which one applies. Vagueness about their own role is worth a question, not a rejection.

Specificity. Concrete numbers, named systems and real constraints are hard to invent and easy to probe in an interview. Generic achievement language is neither.

Trajectory. Increasing scope over time says more than any single title. Titles are wildly inconsistent between organisations.

Relevance of the hard parts. Has this person handled the specific difficulty of your role? Someone who has scaled a system under real load has something a longer resume without that experience does not.

Signals worth less than their reputation

Employment gaps. Caring, illness, study, redundancy, a bad first month somewhere. A gap tells you almost nothing about capability, and screening on it removes capable people for reasons unrelated to the work.

Short tenures. One is noise. A pattern is worth asking about, in an interview, not deciding in a screen.

Years of experience. A proxy that measures elapsed time rather than accumulated skill. Two people with the same number of years can differ enormously.

Prestigious employer names. They tell you someone passed another company's filter, which is weaker evidence than it feels, especially for a different kind of role.

Formatting polish. Real for roles where writing is the job. For most roles it measures access to good advice.

Staying consistent at volume

Set the criteria before opening the first resume. Otherwise the first strong candidate becomes the template, and everyone after is judged against a person rather than a role.

Score against those criteria rather than sorting into yes and no piles. Scoring forces the same questions to be asked of every application and leaves a record you can explain later, which matters both for fairness and for working out afterwards which criteria actually predicted anything.

Automated screening helps here for the same reason: it applies identical criteria to the fiftieth application and the first. Treat the output as an ordering that directs attention, not as a decision, and read the top of the list properly.

FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

Evidence of what this person did rather than what their team did, specific detail that can be probed in an interview, increasing scope over time, and experience of the particular difficulty your role involves. Vagueness about their own contribution is worth a question rather than an immediate rejection.
Rarely. Gaps come from caring responsibilities, illness, study, redundancy and ordinary life, and they say almost nothing about capability. Screening on them removes capable people for reasons unrelated to the work. If a gap matters for a specific reason, ask about it in an interview.
It is a weak proxy. It measures elapsed time rather than accumulated skill, and two candidates with identical years can differ enormously. It also excludes people who acquired the relevant depth quickly. Screen on evidence of the specific capability you need instead.
Decide the criteria before opening the first application, or the first strong candidate becomes the template. Score against those criteria rather than sorting into yes and no piles, which forces the same questions of every application and leaves a record you can review later to see which criteria actually predicted anything.

Related guides

On GigFinder

Comparisons

By industry

  • Information Technology
  • Accounting
  • Engineering

Let the ranking direct your attention

Scoring applies the same criteria to every application, so the reading you do is spent where it counts.

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