New to hiring employees? Heres how to review resumes without losing your mind

I recently had to hire for two critical positions: an editor and a reporter.I put up the job posts, expected a healthy number of applicants and went about my week.

What I got instead was a sheer deluge of resumes.At first, I was thrilled.But as I started clicking through the PDFs, the thrill completely disappeared.

So many of these resumes looked incredibly polished, yet they were missing the core components I explicitly asked for in the job description.I was staring at a mountain of objectively “good” resumes from people who were subjectively wrong for the jobs.If you’re reviewing resumes for the first time, accept this upfront: most of what you’re reading is marketing copy.

Your job isn’t to be impressed.Your job is to verify.If you are a manager or a small business owner, you already know the feeling.

Your calendar is stacked, you are probably already covering the workload of the empty seat you’re trying to fill and now you have to find an extra eight hours a week to dedicate to potentially hundreds of PDFs. It’s exhausting.In fact, according to internal data from ZipRecruiter, sifting through applications and resumes is employers’ second most time-consuming recruiting task, only behind actually interviewing candidates.You cannot afford to read every single resume line for line.

If you want to review resumes without losing your mind, and actually find the person who can do the job, you need a brutal but efficient system.Let’s address the elephant in the room.You are not just getting more resumes; you are getting artificially enhanced resumes. According to a 2024 ZipRecruiter survey of new hires, 66% of job seekers used AI to help with their job search, with 24% using it specifically to write or edit their resumes.This isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Actually, two in three employers report they are open to candidates using AI to help write their resumes, cover letters and applications.But it does mean that the baseline of a good-looking...