Resume reading for effective hiring

I earned my first management role when I was in my early 20’s and thought I knew everything. I was wrong, of course, which is something you don’t realize until much later in life. I messed up many things but learned many lessons while trying to fix what I broke. One of those very important lessons was “how to hire,” and it has recently come to the forefront again. I’ve been reviewing resumes lately and was reminded of a trick I developed for this that others have found helpful – read from the bottom up.

In my previous management role, I was asked to provide some tips to other managers on finding the right people and making an effective hire more quickly. The suggestion that seemed most surprising to the HR team was my trick of reading a resume backward. I have been doing it for some time and have found it effective, so maybe if you are reading this and you are hiring, this can help you, too.

If someone is helping you with filtering resumes, make sure they also understand the rules.

• 1) DO NOT, under any circumstances, look at the first page or have the name or any identifying information visible for the first pass.
• 2) If the resumes are digital files, rename them to a file number or date so you cannot see a name, e.g., “resume_476.”
• 3) Agree that you will always refer to the person in the resume as “they” until you have finalized your selection.
• 4) If you are looking at paper copies of a resume, turn them upside down so you start with the last page first. If you are reading digital files, scroll from the bottom up.
• 5) Consistently read and take notes from the bottom up.

This removes the tendency to bias your decision based on identifying information. A name can skew your sentiment based on assumed sex, ethnicity, and age, which are often factors that are irrelevant to the ability to do a job. As much as we all want to think we don’t have this bias… we do.

Let’s try an experiment. Think of three people, Harold Smith, Tenisha Ussabei, Takashi Ono. By the time you finished reading that sentence, your brain had created an image of each of them based on your own personal experience, and now your ability to make a sane decision has been tainted by cultural bias. No matter how hard you try to ignore it, those mental images are going to affect your decision in some way. This is precisely why I do everything I can to avoid reading names until I have already narrowed down candidates based on skills.

When you read from the bottom up, you start with “hobbies” and “volunteer work.” This is the part that candidates tend to think of as the leftover bits, but they may actually be one of the most important things to consider. If you are looking for someone who will dig in and give 110% just because it is the right thing to do, then the person who volunteers at the local Food Bank or the Boys and Girls Club is probably the person you want on your team.

The education section is usually pretty black and white – either they have the education you require for the role, or they don’t. However, seeing the “other” training that can be good character indicators is always valuable. Someone with a BSc/CompSci degree might fit your needs, but so will the other 12 candidates who have the same degree. The one with additional business, psychology, or art credits may prove to be more valuable, depending on the role you need to fill.

Working up, the next section typically includes the oldest work experience, which is often “waiting tables” or “Grocery store clerk.” I have always found that the people most capable of working calmly through tough customer support issues are the people who got their start in service industries. Working in restaurants, sports venues, retail, and tourism can provide valuable lessons in providing great customer service under extreme pressure. By the way, tip your waiter.

By the time you get halfway up the list of education, you are starting to see relevant current experience for this particular job, but you are also seeing the natural chronological work history. It always seemed odd to me that resumes list history in reverse order – I want to read the story of who this person is and where they came from. Keep working up to the most recent experience to see if they might actually have the expertise you need for this job. I know this will seem backward to the concept of filtering based on current skills, but I have found that character is more important than current knowledge. The reality is that you will have to retrain this person on YOUR current tech anyway, and who they are as a person will be much more important than their GPA in coursework that was obsolete 3 years ago.

Now, at this point, you have a good feeling about who this person is and what shaped them into the person they are today. For me, an ideal person might have waited tables through college and volunteered at the local youth center. They likely still coach youth sports, volunteer at the food bank and play shinny hockey on the weekends. They earned the degree you need to prove skills but also took extra credits in something creative. This person should have a work history and life story that looks like they had to work for it and enjoyed the ride.

And ideally, you STILL don’t have a clue as to sex, race, or age indicators that could skew your thinking. This is the point where I filter into possible candidates and rejections. It’s a sad moment, but it has to be done. Now you can finally scroll up to look at their location, availability, and name.

An important side note here is that this is entirely contrary to some common HR practices that involve hiring quotas based on sex, race, and age that I find pretty abhorrent, but if your company insists on these limitations, have someone else pre-filter resumes that fit that criterion first and save yourself some time. My personal experience is that the right skill sets exist across all demographics, and if you avoid your cultural bias, you will naturally build a diverse team.

Be Awesome; Change the world.