As an employer, you’re going to have to look through tons of resumes to find the right candidate for the job. Lots of those resumes will have red flags that should disqualify them from getting an interview.



What You Should Do:

Finding the right candidates for the job can be challenging. To make things easier, you should consider working with a professional recruitment agency the next time that you have to fill company positions. For instance, you could look into this sales recruitment agency to help you find highly qualified salespeople for your company. It will dramatically improve your hiring process. With their assistance, you’ll know that you’re only interviewing the cream of the crop. 

Otherwise, you should learn these four red flags when you’re reading through resumes. It will help you weed out the wrong candidates:

1. They Applied while on the Clock
You’ve spotted signs that they’ve applied for this position while they were on the clock at their current job. For example, they’ve sent the application during work hours and used their company email.

Why is this a red flag? They may use their work hours to do the same if you hire them. If you don’t want to be subject to employee time theft and lost productivity, then you may want to look at other candidates. 

2. Ignored Instructions
You’ve posted clear instructions on your job listing. Maybe you’ve asked them to send in their resume in the form of a PDF. Or maybe you’ve asked them to address their cover letter to a specific person instead of the general “To Whom It May Concern.” Whatever instruction you added in the listing, you’ve noticed that the applicant has completely ignored it. 
That is a red flag. It shows you that the applicant was not paying enough attention to readthrough your instructions — or worse, that they don’t think that these rules apply to them. 

3. Not Proofreading
It’s clear that they rushed through their application and didn’t stop to proofread what they wrote. Why is that a red flag? It could be a sign that they don’t care about presenting unprofessional work. If you hire them, they might just send emails, memos and reports full of the same errors.

How can you tellthat they didn’t proofread? Here are some clues:

• Typos and misspellings
• Grammatical errors
• Repeated sentences
• Inconsistencies with formatting 
• Content is unclear and difficult to read

4. “Invisible” Keywords
Job seekers are well aware that more companies are using Applicant Tracking Systems to help them filter out job applications. They know that these systems onlyaccept applications that have certain keywords.  

Some of these job seekers might also know a popular resumehack called keyword stuffing or white fonting, where you copy the job description in the listing, paste it at the end of the resume and then change the letters to white to hide it on the page. This is an attempt to trick the filter into automatically approving the resume. 

If you discover signs of this hack, you should automatically disqualify the candidate. Someone who presents themselves as dishonest right off the bat won’t be a desirable employee. 

Don’t ignore the red flags when you’re looking at resumes. If you do, you’ll see those same red flags come up in the workplace after you’ve made the hire.