It is important for HR professionals to recruit the best candidate into the company’s workforce, as the best ones would contribute to productivity enhancement, thus resulting in a company’s better performance and profits.
However, recruiting talent needs extra effort, as some aspects would need more attention and additional assessments. Academic proficiency is a must but what if the talent’s attitude and character doesn’t fit the company’s culture?
Instead of higher productivity achieved, the worse teamwork performance would affect on lower achievement and decreased employee engagement as the outcome.
Therefore, HR professionals should deploy a tactical strategy to screen the right talent for the job amidst the mountainous pile of resumes applying for a particular position. This would involve eliminating the candidates who do not fit the requirements for job role promptly and only interviewing those who are considered fit for the position.
See also : Top 4 Recruiting Challenges in 2016
On scanning through resumes, there are some red flags that HR professionals should watch out for. They are:
This first thing perhaps the most visible resume red flag quite evident is a sloppy and messy resume. This reveals the candidate’s poor attitude towards work and something critically important.
A resume is indeed ‘the key’ to unlock career opportunities and those who pay least to no attention to look into details of a resume such as the appearance and writing details, do not come across as passionate and keen to secure a job role. A sloppy resume, with typographical errors, improper conjunction and spelling mistake is quite irritating, and difficult to read.
On the other hand, a messy resume with much folding and unimportant details explicitly depict the candidate’s low attention to tidiness and formalities.
HR professionals perhaps could give a second chance to invite the candidate into an interview but the resume flaws should be considered seriously before making a hiring decision.
The working history is the most critical part of a resume that every interviewer would take a look first. This part depicts the employee tenure and how long a candidate has been employed in other companies. This significantly relates to the experience and employee engagement at the same time.
When the interviewer notices some short tenures of working period, the one question that prominently occurs to an interviewer’s mind is if – whether the candidate is a chronic job hopper or the previous jobs don’t suit their passion and demands.
The short tenure is a red flag every HR should notice and in case, the candidate possesses required skills, then a phone call or a brief email could help the interviewer seek better clarity on the candidate’s passion, career vision and long-term goals for growth.
On skimming through a resume, HR professionals should be very critical about vague word usage as this leads to misperception and misunderstandings. If the candidate uses a vague word like ‘familiar with’ or ‘participated in’ at the skills and training segments, it doesn’t always mean that she/he has competent ability towards a skill or seeks advantage from the activity.
The word ‘familiar with’ is like a tricky disguise as the talent perhaps only ‘knows’ instead of ‘professionally mastering’ a skill. Also, the word ‘participated in’ could mean the candidate only was a part of the training or seminar program, rather than being actively involved in the sessions. A reliable talent would like to describe things with appropriate usage of words for the interviewer to seek clarity on the subject matter of their expertise. This would help them secure additional brownie points during assessments of their resume.
Overqualified applicant definitely intrigues interests of the HR professional and the top management in an organisation, as the candidate is expected to bring about a change in workings through achievements on job and better performance output.
Meanwhile, the overqualified candidate is also a red flag as she/he could merely take up the job for a short period as a “stop gap arrangement” while waiting for the most desired job that suits their passion, skills and demands.
Highly qualified applicants ask for higher salary, treatments and facilities as they are pursuing higher degree and experienced more on the related skills. The most essential thing to remember is that HR professionals should ensure that such candidates work optimally for longer periods of time and benefit the company’s growth plans.
Every company wants to recruit the best talent on board that is a best fit for the company’s culture and goals. Therefore, it is expected of the HR managers to be extremely critical during assessment of candidate profiles during interviews and the recruitment process. Resume red flags do caution every HR manager to recognize immediately the flaws, and make decisions only after careful consideration and clarification sought from employee during the first initial rounds of interview.
Next read : Why Should HR Professionals Schedule Second Interview?
