Recruiters are choosing resumes more randomly than you think

Crafting an eye-catching resume is no easy feat — especially when recruiters find a resume worth their attention one day, and the next, toss that same resume aside. 

Kickresume tasked six recruiters with reviewing 6,000 resumes to place job applicants with  6,000 available roles, but the recruiters weren't told they would see the same resume twice. Upon seeing the resume again, Kickresume found that there was only a 40% chance recruiters would choose that candidate again, even after previously deeming them a good fit for a job post. Using a metric called Cohen's Kappa, which measures the level of agreement between respondents' answers on a scale from zero to one (zero being random and one being total agreement), Kickresume pinpointed just how consistent recruiters were with themselves. Respondents scored a 0.49.

"This basically means they were halfway towards randomness," says Peter Duris, co-founder and CEO of Kickresume. "This just goes to show how unpredictable the process can be." 

Read more: 'Trying to stay human': A look into what it takes to land a job

Notably, when Kickresume tried the same experiment with an AI job matching tool, the tech scored 0.45, just under the human recruiters' scores. This doesn't necessarily mean employers should rush to replace recruiters, but it does underline the utility of using AI to assess potential candidates, at least in the initial resume round, says Duris. 

Since both tech and humans failed to be perfectly consistent, that does leave challenges for employers and job seekers alike. On the one hand, to get the best candidates, organizations need recruiters on the same page. That means the job qualifications for every unfilled role need to be clear and realistic — a recruiter should be able to pinpoint what factors made them throw a resume into the "yes" pile, notes Duris. He adds that recruiters should not look at too many resumes at once, if possible, since it becomes increasingly hard to stay engaged. While that wouldn't eliminate inconsistency entirely from the selection process, it would likely help.

Read more: Ready to recruit better? Here's what job seekers want

As for job seekers, Duris advises them to let go of the idea of crafting the "perfect" resume. 

"This study clearly shows that perfection is very subjective for [recruiters] anyway," he says. "There's a huge chance you won't get the job even if you're perfect."

Read more: Recruiters tell all: Red flags, resumes and the 6-second rule

Duris encourages job seekers to instead focus on sending out a certain amount of job applications each week, putting just enough energy into ensuring the application fits the job post and is free of copy errors. He also stresses the importance of engaging one's network and reaching out to recruiters so there's a higher chance of someone actually looking at their resume.

"Don't rely on the perfect resume and network to get a job that you love," says Duris. "At the end of the day, it's about putting your best foot forward."