How to Spot a Good Candidate With a Bad CV & Not Waste Time on Bad Candidates With a Perfect CV

Every day, HR departments are flooded with resumes for each open position, and it’s up to recruiters to sift through these to find the best fit. This process is a lot like lead generation in sales — it requires full attention and a careful eye to filter out those who might seem promising on paper but are only in it for the paycheck. The last thing any of us wants is to hire someone who jumps ship at the first sight of a slightly better offer. Bad hires often just do the bare minimum, lacking any real commitment to the company’s goals. This sets the stage for turnover, something we all want to avoid.

That’s why the initial CV screening is critical. It’s not just about filling a vacancy; it’s about attracting and retaining the right talent to drive our collective success. In this article, I’ll share some common mistakes that often cause promising candidates to be overlooked — mistakes that recruiters and hiring managers should be careful not to dismiss too quickly.

How CV screening can save you from unqualified hiring

When selecting candidates, everyone wants and tries to assemble the best specialists. Most often, a recruiter only needs to look at a resume to decide whether it is worth continuing a dialogue with its writer. A resume is a candidate’s first impression, but you shouldn’t rule out candidates based entirely on their CVs. When looking for the ideal candidate, simply digging for a perfect CV could result in missing out on some very qualified candidates. The truth is, some of the best-untapped talents could be hiding underneath a bad CV. Consider the following examples.

#1: A lack of info in the CV

Very often, recruiters have to deal with uninformative CVs showing zero information about what the candidate did in general. For example, there can be a description of the company and technologies they worked with but no specifications of the candidate’s responsibilities and their role in projects.

• In such cases, it is good to ask the candidate to describe their duties and roles in the projects over the past couple of years.
• Ask them to describe challenges they encountered. There may have been some nonstandard, complex, engaging tasks to mention. If the candidate refuses to specify, it is equivalent to rejection. Describes — super, as it will be much clearer whether they fit the vacancy and partially save time for the pre-screening.

#2: Poor layout and design

CV design is something that professional recruiters should really ignore. A recruiter doesn’t have to evaluate a candidate’s creative skills if such skills are not required for the position. But, hiring managers may pay attention to the CV design. Random capitalization, special characters, unnecessary spacing, large font, and inappropriate punctuation. This makes a resume incomprehensible.

• At the pre-screening, you can check the candidate’s resume together with them and ask them to correct some things. This must be done before forwarding their resume to managers and interviewers. Therefore, you can highlight the problems together, and the candidate will correct them by doing their “homework.”
• But there is one thing. Often, the CV review stage comes before the pre-screening or screening stage. In this case, read the next paragraphs of this article. If the candidate looks like a perfect match, you can record a video for them in Loom and explain why it is worth changing their CV and show what they need to change.

#3: Too much information on the CV

It is quite easy to overlook most required qualifications when reviewing a candidate’s CV with 10+ years of experience. But the most important experience is the candidates’ last two years of work or projects for the same period.

• When reviewing a CV with a bunch of unnecessary details, focus only on the latest experience. When forwarding such CVs to interviewers or hiring managers, you can advise them to do the same.
• Candidates often pile many different technologies and tools in one heap, so it is pretty complicated to evaluate their general technical profile. You can ask the candidate to divide technologies and tools into two lists: ‘proficient in’ and ‘worked with’ to assess their expertise and qualifications more precisely.

#4: Grammar mistakes

Yes, if candidates write perfectly in Kotlin, their grammar should also be good. But of course, not all positions require excellent written communication, so you shouldn’t judge candidates entirely on their spelling and grammar. For example, a candidate could possess the necessary experience and skills to make them a perfect match for engineering positions. Still, they may not know how to create an eye-catching CV.

• You can be less concerned about the candidate’s spelling (knowing they probably just made a typo) and more concerned that they overlooked an error, which speaks volumes about their tendencies. If you hire such a candidate to work in accounting, for instance, and they constantly overlook small details, they could cause severe problems for the company.

#5: Spotting and dealing with job hoppers

Several strange professions and short work periods in each — facts that often make the recruiter doubt the resume of a specialist. The conclusion seems obvious — a person who moves from job to job is most likely inconsistent and unfocused. Job hopping may be connected with the low competence of the candidate or their inability to work in a team. However, the same facts may indicate a purposeful struggle against obstacles. Taking a career break doesn’t reflect a candidate’s skills and abilities, and gaps in employment aren’t necessarily alarming. Therefore, at the very least, the candidate deserves an interview. If a candidate is otherwise qualified and has strong work experience and skills, it’s worth discussing gaps in employment with the candidate. Focus on screening candidates when faced with tough hiring decisions rather than looking for little reasons to screen them out to avoid missing out on exceptional talent.

• In the case when a candidate frequently changes jobs, it is vital to find out what they are looking for and what is the most important for them in a new place, without which they won’t consider this position.
• It is always valuable to look beyond the relevancy of a candidate’s work experience. Suppose you detect top soft skills such as organization, attention to detail, and written communication expertise. In that case, that’s a good sign of moving forward with the candidate.

I genuinely hope that the tips I’ve shared will encourage you to see a candidate’s resume as just the starting point for a deeper conversation. It’s easy to overlook someone based on a piece of paper, but remember, people are far more complex than their resumes can ever show. So next time you’re screening CVs, take a moment to look beyond the words. Focus on the skills and potential you’re truly seeking, and you might just find the perfect fit for your team.