In the world of recruitment, especially when hiring freshers, relying solely on resumes often leads to poor hiring decisions. Resumes provide only a limited snapshot of a candidate’s education and work experience. For fresh graduates, who may not have much professional history, resumes can be particularly misleading. Additionally, in countries like India where application volumes are very high, relying on filtering keywords through ATS. Which, yet again, favours the correct words over the correct experience. All in all - resumes just don’t work by themselves anymore.Here's why resumes might not be reliable when you're hiring freshers and what recruiters, like those at Profesh, should focus on instead to make more informed and efficient recruitment choices. Here's to saying no to resume parsing ATS.
1. Resume Exaggerations and Misrepresentation
One common problem during fresher recruitment is that resumes -more often than not - contain embellishments or even misrepresentations. Freshers eager to secure their first job might exaggerate their achievements or skills, which can lead to hiring mistakes.
What to Focus On Instead:
Skill Validation: The resume creates a certain expectation or perception in your mind as a recruiter. It becomes very important to verify if what you read matches what you see because, in cases of mismatches, a lot of time & resources are wasted on interviewing unsuitable candidates. When hiring freshers, tools like Profesh help to ensure the recruitment process focuses on actual communication & presentability, not resume claims. For roles that demand expertise in hard skills, conducting standardised skills assessments after the preliminary screening on Profesh, to measure a candidate’s abilities objectively.
Work Samples: Ask candidates to provide work samples or project portfolios that can showcase their abilities more accurately.
2. Unconscious Bias in Resume Review
Unconscious bias often creeps into the recruitment process when resumes are used as the sole screening tool. Factors like the candidate’s name, education, or location can bias decisions. This is especially problematic when hiring freshers from diverse educational backgrounds.
What to Focus On Instead:
Candidate abilities: With Profesh, you view the candidate's confidence, communication, presentability, presence, intent and commitment to the role before the college name or their grades and their resume formatting.
3. Static Work History vs. Potential
Resumes only reflect a candidate’s past, but when you're hiring freshers, you’re more interested in their potential. Fresh graduates may have a limited work history, which makes it difficult for recruiters to evaluate their true capabilities.
What to Focus On Instead:
Competency-Based Hiring: Adopt a competency-based hiring approach to evaluate core skills like communication, teamwork, and adaptability, which are better indicators of future success in the job.
Personality and Behavioral Interviews: Incorporate behavioural interviews to understand how a candidate would handle real-world scenarios, giving you a better sense of their problem-solving abilities and cultural fit. The preliminary shortlisting at this stage can be done via the Profesh app.
4. Resume Formatting Challenges
Freshers often lack the experience needed to format their resumes effectively, which can result in missing out on top talent during the recruitment process.
What to Focus On Instead:
Structured Interview Questions: Use structured interview methods to ensure you’re assessing each candidate fairly, without focusing too much on how well they’ve formatted their resume.
Look for soft skills: Hard skills can be developed with a few weeks of training, but candidates with a strong set of soft skills are your strongest team members.
5. Experience vs. Skills Mismatch
Resumes often place too much emphasis on experience rather than actual skills, which is problematic when hiring freshers who may have developed valuable skills through alternative methods like online courses, internships, or freelance work.
What to Focus On Instead:
Skills-Based Hiring: Focus on hiring for skills rather than experience. This is crucial when hiring freshers since they may not have a long work history but could possess the right skills for the job.
Cognitive and Personality Tests: Use cognitive aptitude tests and personality tests to evaluate the candidate’s strengths and weaknesses beyond what their resume might indicate. This can be conducted at a foundation level on the Profesh app to review personality traits.
6. Cultural Fit and Soft Skills Are Not Visible
Soft skills like communication, adaptability, and teamwork, which are critical when hiring freshers, cannot be easily reflected on a resume. Resumes also fail to convey whether a candidate would be a good cultural fit for your organization.
What to Focus On Instead:
Cultural Fit Assessments: Profesh app enables companies to incorporate cultural fit assessments or group tasks to evaluate how well a candidate aligns with your company’s values.
Behavioral Interviews: These interviews can provide deeper insights into the candidate’s communication and teamwork skills, which are critical for fresher recruitment.
Conclusion
Relying on resumes alone can be limiting and unreliable when hiring freshers. The key to effective recruitment is to go beyond the static, surface-level information presented on a resume. Tools, particularly Profesh, should leverage a combination of skills assessments, culture fit tests, and behavioral interviews to get a well-rounded view of a candidate’s potential. By focusing on real skills and cultural fit, rather than just resume content, you’ll make smarter hiring decisions and build stronger, more capable teams of fresh talent.
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