CV/résumé review

While CVs have been shown to be less predictive in helping you find the best candidates for the job, we understand it can sometimes be difficult to give up on using them in one go. 

If your hiring team is having difficulties letting go of CVs/Résumés when it comes to deciding who to move through to the next hiring stage, we recommend using Applied's CV/résumé review tool as a first step toward de-biasing your hiring process.

Want to anonymise CVs in review? When the CV Review Tool is enabled, you can choose to automatically redact CVs/resumes collected from your candidates. Learn how to anonymise CVs here.

After you have used this review method for some roles, your team can then adopt more predictive and inclusive hiring methods. Learn more about these methods here

This article covers the following:

• Overview of Applied's CV/résumé review feature, including the science behind it 
• Main steps underlying Applied's CV/résumé review

Overview of Applied's CV/résumé review feature

Candidates will upload their CVs/Résumés when applying for a job and then your team can use focus questions to objectively score them.

The scores candidates get on their CVs will be available on the candidate management page of each role so you can objectively compare them. The scores can also help your team to have more transparent and objective conversations about candidates.

Here's more about the science behind this feature: 

Principle	Why?	What it means for you
Structured Questions	Assessing candidates on the same criteria is more objective and mitigates the risk of unconsciously paying attention to unnecessary pieces of information in people's CV/résumé. Reviewers need to slow down and think twice instead of relying on implicit biases.	We allow you to set focus questions with review guides so all candidates are assessed, scored and then compared using the same criteria.
Rules for  Scoring	Our memories can sometimes fail us: - we tend to remember the highs and lows more (rather than having holistic overviews). - we tend to unconsciously overstate the first 15 seconds of any interaction, or what we see on a CV.	You score candidates on each question as you go, with the help of review guides you set up in advance. Applied will calculate overall performance for you, enabling greater objectivity.
Crowdsourcing	We all have a slightly different way of seeing the world, and that means we rarely agree completely on what 'good' looks like. Hiring decisions made by only one person can end up being skewed by their personal perspective. Hiring decisions made by a group of people talking together can result in "groupthink" or social hierarchy biases where true opinions are not shared.	Reviewers score CVs/Résumés independently, and their reviews are averaged out for a candidate. This means reviewers will not influence each other in their scoring. A CV's overall score is a more holistic measure of performance across focus questions.

CV/Résumé Review: 5 steps

Step 1. The CV Review feature will be automatically enabled when you decide to ask for CVs

When you are in a role's Builder, go to the Application stage section to enable CV/resumé collection. When you ask for CV/résumé, Applied automatically enables the Anonymised CV review feature.

You can turn off the Anonymised CV review tool if you want to collect CVs for administrative reasons or use them as a 'conversation starter' that doesn't affect shortlisting decisions.

Step 2. Add and edit your CV scoring criteria

If the CV review feature is enabled, you'll see a new section on your role builder, where you can add focus questions that will help your team assess CVs more objectively.

With these questions, you'll move away from a fast and abstract 'yes/no' decision, to a more detailed assessment that better reflects the job description, the skills required for the job, and any other criteria agreed upon with hiring teams.

For each focus question you can add: 

• A question title that will then help you find questions easily for future jobs
• The actual question you want to ask reviewers when assessing CVs
• Review guides that will help your team be more objective when deciding if a CV deserves a 'yes', 'no', or 'maybe' 

💡 Add around 3-5 focus questions. One focus question can lead to a very vague assessment of a CV, and more than 5 questions can mean an unnecessary load for reviewers.

Step 3. Allocate applications to CV Review

After you receive applications, you can allocate candidates to the CV/Résumé Review via each role's candidate management page. Simply click on the box on the far left of the candidate record as shown here, if you are choosing a single candidate record or the box above the whole list of records, if you are choosing all applications to review at once.

Clicking on the box will bring up the blue action banner and at this point just click onto the 'person-on-a-piece-of-paper' icon to choose anonymous CV review.

A pop up box will appear with a menu for CV Review here you can pick who will review the CV and other aspects of how the review will take place.

Step 4. Score CVs and start seeing average scores on your candidate management page

Once CVs are allocated to the hiring team, they will receive an email with their unique CV review link. They can also access the link via 'My tasks' page, after they log in to Applied.

💡 These CV review links are different from the links that reviewers use to anonymously review sift questions. So if you're using both assessment methods, reviewers will get 2 separate review links and have 2 separate tasks on their 'tasks' page.

Once reviewers open their CV review link, they'll see each CV and the focus questions they've been asked to use for screening candidates. Scoring is based on a yes/some/no scale to ensure that answers are based as objectively as possible so your reviewers do not have to decide what constitutes a 3 star versus a 4 star experience. Rather, your reviewers can quickly answer factually. 

As soon as reviewers score CVs, job admins will be able to see these scores on their candidate management page. The scores correspond to the overall average of all the scores on all questions, from all reviewers. These are then represented on your candidate list below side by side with Sift scores and interviews. 

Step 5. Learn insights about your CV Review 

On the diversity pipeline charts, you'll be able to learn how much this assessment method affects your diversity goals. You'll see how many people were scored through this method and then who was moved through to other stages. Having access to this data is the starting point for reflecting on your hiring process and identifying what needs changing.

If you are curious about other insights you'd like to learn from using CV Review, please don't hesitate to share your thoughts via [e-mail].