Recently, we’ve looked at various topics on recruitment, based on how to improve your job advert, and why salary is an essential piece of information to candidates. We’ve also explored how to spot lies on a CV to ensure you have a skilled group of candidates available to interview. These are all important aspects for your talent search.
Now let’s focus on how to identify a relevant CV when you’re searching a CV database.
Source personality
It’s important that the CV is relevant to your role – so when you’re looking at each CV, find evidence in a CV that the candidate has done their homework and due diligence on your firm and the job itself. They should have made it clear in their cover letter why they want the job. For example, do they have an interest for building key relationships with clients? Or have they completed work in relevant areas of the law pro-bono? Perhaps they would take pride in being a representative for your firm? Spotting where they have gone out of their way to learn alongside their job is a huge indicator of a strong, ambitious candidate.
Locate passion
Finding a candidate who shows passion for their career is a huge benefit to your company. And passion shines through in a carefully crafted CV. You might see examples of passion in the hobbies section, or in the certifications/qualifications section. Perhaps your candidate chose to study alongside their previous role to acquire the skills they feel they have now achieved to apply for your job? Or they have highlighted some key reading materials in their cover letter – this is real passion, going above and beyond to acquire the relevant knowledge, usually outside of work hours.
Don’t just look for buzzwords
Most candidates will use buzzwords based on the information you have provided in your job description. But it’s how they use these buzzwords in their CV that matters.
One big mistakes candidates make, is listing their skills, the same as your job description – they want the quickest way of appealing to your needs, but they may not have actually applied their skills to reassure you they can do the job. So look out for strong examples of candidates demonstrating how they have used the relevant skills at work, or in education. By ‘speaking the language’ you have more solid proof that they can perform in the role you’re recruiting for.
It’s not ideal to screen candidates against buzzwords for the job – recruiters need to look deeper. You should also review the CV for a proven track record of achievement on their application. While a keyword search comes in extremely handy to whittle down applications initially, like our advanced CV Discovery tool, you have to look deeper at the CV to assess if the candidate has genuine knowledge and experience of the area in question.
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