Searching Resumes
One of the recruiters’ most common tasks is searching for resumes online and searching within resumes as part of the applicant screening process. For professionals new to the recruiting industry, searching resumes can seem like a daunting task. How do recruiters find relevant resumes online? How do they find the right candidate for the job from the resumes they have downloaded? These questions can make a new recruiter sweat, but those that have been in the business for a while have some great tips and tricks for searching resumes efficiently to find the best candidates for a position.
Work the Search Engines
The key to getting quality resumes that are relevant to the position you’re trying to fill is to have a good search method. When searching resumes online, don’t just start typing into a search engine. Always start with advanced search options, and check options like exact phrase and searchable links. You can also refine your search terms. Don’t just use “resumes,” add in descriptors like the industry or relevant job titles. Many job sites also use the phrase “view resumes” in their links, so you can use that term. Check out the resume sites to see what kind of terms they use, and then plug those into your search engine.
Scour Your Network
As a recruiter, you should have a wide online network of business contacts. Search through your network on social media sites like LinkdIn and Facebook to find candidate contact information online. You can use the same search engine tricks on these sites to return relevant results. You can also follow contact threads, meaning that you look at not only your own contacts, but their contacts as well, following the connections until you find a candidate that you like.
Look Into Recruiting Software
There are tons of recruiter resume searching software solutions out there for the technology-savvy recruiter. Programs called web spiders will crawl over the internet to find resumes and contacts using your targeted search terms. Look for recruiter software that targets resumes both online and in resume databases. These software solutions can do the grunt work for you and return resumes with a click of the mouse.
Reviewing Resumes
Once you have your resumes there in front of you, how do you search them to find the best candidates? Recruiters with a lot of experience have searching resumes down to a science. When scanning resumes, first look for location, then industry, then job title, then level of experience. You can use your computer to search within documents as well, just click the option to search inside documents for job titles or industries. Google Desktop is also a good option to search for resumes through your computer’s hard drives and even across your company networked drives.