Our search firm presents resumes to hiring managers almost every day. And on that short list of people is usually at least one resume the hiring manger would prefer to reject. In a few seconds of skimming the resume, all the hiring managers can envision is some unqualified person wasting an hour of their precious time. So rejecting the unusual resume seems like a time saver … except it’s not.

It’s common knowledge among experienced hiring managers that less qualified candidates often have great resumes, and more qualified candidates often have mediocre resumes. In my experience, the best qualified candidate for a job is rarely the person who looks best on paper. Things are no different later in the hiring sequence - the candidate who offers the most polished interview answers is not always the person best qualified to do the job.

When you read resumes, what mental shortcuts do you take? If you want to hire smart people, do you look for the reputation of their college? If you want people who are highly skilled and professional, do you look for the reputation of their current employers? And how much weight do you give to the pedigree of a candidate’s educational institution or previous employers?

Imagine you advertised an open position, and are now sitting down to review a stack of 100 resumes.

A few months ago I was talking to a CEO about one of his senior managers.  This manager believes he can read a lot into a resume, so he summarily rejects quite a few resumes when he is hiring.  The CEO decided to test this manager's selection skills by forwarding his own resume using a different name.  The CEO was, of course, rejected as unworthy of an interview.

One of the biggest causes of your staffing problems may be your own resume bias.   No, I am not referring to age, gender, race or religious bias.  Hopefully you are not biased in that way - none of us want to think of ourselves as biased in any way, but most people are "resume biased."

We presented a strong slate of candidates to a client this week.   The recruiting process had gone well up to that point and, anticipating good news, my Project Manager was intensely curious to hear feedback from our client.  (We also knew they had been looking for quite some time prior to engaging us on the search, so we knew they had high standards).    We discussed all six candidates at length with the client and the conversation seemed to go very well.