Scanning CVs

I'm writing about work at the moment because it's become all-consuming. I'm using lots of generalities, because, as you may have noticed, when I write about work, I say no more than I work for a utilities company in the city and I'm a technical writer. And I don't mention colleagues by name or description. I don't go into details. It's just not done in blogland. 

Regular readers will also be aware that my one up was sacked a few weeks ago and my life has been turned upside down because I now find myself leading a team. 

It's a steep learning curve. 

Other than leading a team, which is something I've never done officially, I also have to help my manager recruit people. And this is an interesting thing to do. 

I've scanned CVs once before. This time around , I watched myself and the thought processes around this. 

The document from HR is opened. 

I'm looking for skills, not so much job titles. 

There's the things they have done before - they may not be technical writers, but they might have a lot of documentation experience. 

You look at where they've been before? Is there anybody you know who you can ask about them?

Then there's the education factor. What have they studied? What are their interests? Do they look like an interesting person along with being good at what they do? 

Employment wise. Have they moved about? Do they only have a couple of jobs on their CV?

Then there are the intangibles. Like do they have PMS? (Pale Male Syndrome - it's a tone thing - but you can easily get the impression if somebody is a wanker) What impressions do they give? Are they welll rounded? Do they have any career breaks? Do they come across as somebody who will fit in the team? 

And you have about five minutes to sum them all up and give an answer to the person in HR who can then go and vet them. 

Of course, I used my own form of scanning. I searched for a few key words and systems and took note of where they worked. Did they have key system experience? What sort of projects have they worked on? Are they more technical or business focussed? For the person whose CV was a near mirror image of mine, touched base with some old colleagues and got the heads up. 

A decision is then made. 

Then the email goes back to HR asking if they can phone screen a couple of the candidates. 

And I don't envy anybody doing this regularly. It's not that you can give everybody a job, but the weight of getting the right person in for the job weighs heavily on my head. Unfortunately, we can't get a clone of myself or my current colleague. One of our newbies is excellent and we'll make sure they get trained up quickly. I'm enjoying mentoring them. They said today they'd never felt so supported in a role. 

But I'm reeling at this new task of scanning CVs. It doesn't sit well and I feel all judgy, and I have no idea how people do this more than once a decade. 

Today's song: