Recruiters are choosing resumes more randomly than you think

Published 3 Min Read

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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.

Deanna Cuadra
Senior Reporter

Deanna Cuadra is a senior reporter at Employee Benefit News. Her work covers healthcare, U.S. policy and reform, challenges faced by women and parents in the workplace and innovation in work culture … Read full bio


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