I concede that I may be biased, but all signs are pointing out that CV screening doesn't work.CV screening has traditionally been the way of shortlisting candidates for several decades, even centuries, but there has never been any conclusive study to say that it has ever worked.
Think of a scenario in which you select candidates just by looking at the CVs…
How can you really know what a candidate's skills and abilities are? Whether a candidate has exaggerated a lot? Or how can you differentiate someone who has researched the position so thoroughly that he/she was able to build a CV that reflects the perfect profile for the role, from someone who has the perfect profile?
Alternatively, there may be an ideal candidate but you may unconsciously disqualify them because their CV might not be flashy enough or because of their unusual work history. This is a much more insidious problem as you don’t want to be missing out on top talent.
Of course, you can find those out in the interviews. But isn’t that too late?
So there is no way you would know whether a candidate has vastly overstated or understated their abilities until the interview. Even the innocuous behavior of showing just the best parts of oneself on the resume can skew can influence your thinking.
I have seen phony candidates who have exaggerated (even fabricated) their CVs to the teeth, and I have seen exceptional candidates who are so introverted and unconcerned about their appearances that they cannot write persuasive CVs.
The Start-up founders and recruiters are skilled enough that you can read through someone on the interviews. But if you cannot ascertain that the interviewees are a decent fit for the role before the interviews, isn’t that wasted time, especially if there is a way with pre-hiring assessments for you to mitigate the uncertainty? And as a start-up, the last thing you want to do is to waste time, especially the time of the co-founders and recruiters on unfit candidates.
And there is a whole different argument about insidiously creeping cognitive biases (which we will cover in a different article), that makes the entire process fraught with uncertainty.
Start-up founders and seasoned recruiters have certainly honed their skills in smelling the fit and unfit candidates for the role. And I am not suggesting that this honed intuition cannot work in CV screening. I am just saying that it needs help. The intuition that helps you find the right candidate in the interviews won’t always work as effectively in a CV screening scenario. Additionally, it is always right to be skeptical of one’s intuition.
This is why CV Screening simply won’t and can’t work, and also indirectly why Pre-hiring assessment will work. That will be covered in an upcoming article.
This is what Merreo pre-hiring tests do. We want to help you ascertain that the candidate you will be interviewing is a good fit for the role thereby working in tandem with your finely honed intuition to pick the best candidate for the job.
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