Every hiring manager has to read a stack of resumes at some point. But it’s so easy to put off making time to read through them. You put out a few fires, go to lunch and some meetings and boom, the day is done.
When the stack is still staring at you three days later, you finally relent and take it home. After dinner, you settle in, find something good on Netflix and read resumes.
This is how important things get missed. It’s not just that you are distracted. At the end of a long day you are also tired. It’s likely that you feeling pretty uninspired. The sense that you could successfully onboard a new team member is not very high. Your ability to see candidates with potential or out of box skills is greatly diminished.
You go to bed feeling like there will never be any good candidates, have a crappy sleep and then bark at your colleagues the next day.
See how that works?
The best time to read resumes is at the beginning of the day. You are fresh and open to possibilities. When you see patterns or themes that work (or don’t work), you can take action. Perhaps the job posting needs to be changed or the pre-screening questions need to be more comprehensive.
You have a much better chance of improving the process if you tackle the stack in the morning. Block time in your calendar, grab a hot cup of coffee and get reading. It won’t take a long as you think and you might be surprised with the results.
Recruiter's Couch 