Screening resumes: A how-to guide for hiring managers

Determine key criteria upfront

Each candidate will have a different range of experiences and skills, but there must be clear alignment between their background and the job being recruited for. In order to sift through resumes quickly and efficiently, hiring managers must know which skills or qualities are nonnegotiable and remove all applicants who don't meet that bar. This way, recruiters can be confident that any candidate who reaches the interview stage is equipped to do the job.

Of course, creating this list of requirements is not always straightforward; newer technology like AI has changed the way many jobs work. Therefore, hiring managers may want to follow the following steps:

• Sort skills into two buckets, must-haves and nice-to-haves. This reduces the chance of automatically eliminating strong candidates who have the core skillset but are otherwise a less traditional fit.
• Judge whether some skills hold more weight than others, even within the requirements, and rank accordingly.
• Update skills requirements with the new tools and approaches that are used today, such as AI literacy or familiarity with specific software. A successful hire will be able to hit the ground running in a modern environment.
• Assess whether a candidate is experienced in working in a remote environment and has a strong grasp of asynchronous communication tools, depending on role and location.

Hiring managers should also make sure to include soft skills in their screening criteria. Soft skills refer to aspects of emotional intelligence that contribute to professional success, such as adaptability, collaboration and communication. These skills can often be critical to a candidate's overall success in a role, as they impact how well an applicant can work within a team and respond to different scenarios. If a company has a specific culture, it might also be important to filter applicants by relevant behavioral traits and cultural alignment, as well as technical proficiency.

Deploy the right technology to help screen resumes at scale

Today, many companies have their own digital portal through which candidates can apply for jobs. Then there are the various job sites and recruitment boards that make it easy for job hunters to upload a single resume and submit it to multiple postings. In an already competitive landscape, hiring managers often find that a single opening will receive thousands of applicants – sometimes in under 24 hours.

To make it easier to sift through the pile, consider using a hiring platform or tool to assist in early-stage resume filtering. Some third-party services will also offer assistance throughout the entire recruitment process, but it's the transition from application to first round interview where technological assistance makes a dramatic difference. These tools commonly deploy AI to compare resumes to the job description, quickly identifying keywords and measuring tone, structure and overall compatibility. Examples of products in this space include SeekOut, Ashby and Hiretual.

Hiring managers should ensure they understand how to deploy AI effectively and refine the filtering process to match the specific criteria they've determined for the role, rather than use blanket standards for that role type or title. This reduces the chance that good candidates will slip through the cracks. For instance, rather than asking for candidates to have experience in coding, hiring managers might instead filter for fluency in specific coding languages.

Build bias mitigation into the hiring process

All humans are susceptible to unconscious bias, which can influence hiring practices and lead to good candidates being overlooked. Bias can influence human opinion on a host of different characteristics: notable ones such as race, gender and sexuality, but also other categories such as age, class and religion. Hiring managers shouldn't berate themselves for having unconscious bias, but they should make efforts to address any bias they hold and consider using a bias mitigation strategy or tool to help screen resumes. This is especially true if they are also using AI tools, as these have been found to sometimes be biased themselves.

Bias mitigation may look like:

• Removing identifying details from a resume, such as name, age or gender, so that candidates are only assessed on experience and skills.
• Instituting equity goals to increase the likelihood that the pool of candidates for first-round interviews is more reflective of the local population.
• Actively promoting the job in communities that are historically underrepresented in that field, company or job level.

There are tools that can automatically remove identifying information from resumes as part of the screening process, so that HR managers only receive the filtered version. Alternatively, the original job application form could be reworked so that certain identifying details are removed from the initial screening. In some cases, companies may also want to explicitly invite applicants to share their identity as part of their overall DEI targets.

Factor in current job trends and employment contexts

Historically, it has been seen as a negative for a candidate to have a few gaps in their resume or to have spent only a few months in a role before leaving. This might suggest they would be an unreliable hire long-term or that a previous employer was unhappy with their performance. While this could apply to today's applicants, there is important context that might portray these gaps or short stints in a more favorable light.

Recent years have seen several waves of layoffs and hiring freezes that have affected hundreds of thousands of employees, particularly in the technology sector. In 2024 alone, the independent layoffs tracker Layoffs.fyi reported that more than 150,000 people were laid off by tech companies; as of July 2025, there have been 80,000 layoffs this year. This then floods the hiring pool with talented candidates, all competing for the same jobs.

Therefore, when reviewing a resume, hiring managers would be wise to keep that context in mind. Some strong candidates might have been unlucky with a mass layoff, especially if they were newer hires, which would explain a short length of employment or an extended unemployment period. This could be worth asking about in a phone interview rather than dismissing the candidate upfront.

Incorporate digital resume trends into the screening process

A resume no longer has to be a sheet of paper that lists professional experience in black and white. Many young professionals and those in creative fields are building nontraditional resumes that may include graphics, videos or links to external portfolios. It's important that the screening process is technically equipped to process these alternative resumes, especially when hiring for creative roles, so that the applicants aren't skipped over by default.

Applicants might also use external credentials to demonstrate their expertise, such as a Coursera qualification or LinkedIn Skill Assessment. Hiring managers should be knowledgeable about what these credentials mean when assessing resumes, to ensure they are given sufficient weight. Sometimes, these credentials might replace traditional education and hiring managers should be open-minded about alternative paths.

Finally, many candidates are using AI to adjust or rewrite their resumes to match a specific job posting. While this is not necessarily unacceptable, hiring managers should seek to dig beneath the perfectly matched language and see if they can find authenticity or substance underneath. AI is used in many jobs, so a good command of the technology can be a positive for a prospective hire; it just should not mask the truth or mislead the applicant's true abilities.

Madeleine Streets is a senior content manager for WhatIs. She has also been published in 'TIME,' 'WWD,' 'Self' and Observer.