How to Prioritize Resume Screening: The Best Starting Point

Introduction

The method you choose for resume screening can dramatically impact both the quality and efficiency of your hiring process. Traditional methods like First In, First Out (FIFO) or ATS filters can be time-consuming, inefficient, and prone to missing great candidates. With Brainner’s AI-powered approach, you can prioritize resumes in a way that guarantees both high-quality and efficient analysis while minimizing risks.

Why Traditional Methods Fall Short

FIFO Screening

Candidates are reviewed in the order they apply. This method is arbitrary, inefficient, and carries a high risk of missing qualified candidates or reaching them too late. The quality of analysis also suffers due to inconsistency from human reviewers, who may become fatigued over time. This inefficiency is driven by a heavily manual process, with around 80-90% of resumes reviewed manually. The risk of overlooking candidates is high because the best candidate might apply at the last minute, and you either won’t have time to analyze them, or you may reach them a week too late.

ATS Filters

This method filters candidates based on specific variables extracted from the ATS (e.g., skills or expected salary). While somewhat helpful, ATS filters rely on basic keyword matching, which can be rigid, error-prone, and limited in scope—it doesn’t provide a holistic analysis of all criteria. Qualified candidates can be easily overlooked if their resumes don’t use the exact keywords. Additionally, since recruiters don’t fully trust this method, they end up manually reviewing 50-60% of resumes, which remains a tedious and inefficient task. The accuracy of ATS filters is often lacking because they don’t offer the depth of understanding provided by AI-powered semantic search.

The Brainner Approach: A Better Starting Point for Analysis

Brainner’s AI analyzes, in real time, whether candidates meet the recruiting criteria defined by the recruiter. It assigns a score to each candidate, with 80% weight given to mandatory criteria and 20% to preferred ones. This score is simply a tool to sort candidates by how many criteria they meet—it doesn’t mean the candidate at the top of the list is necessarily the “best” candidate.

Rather than making decisions for you, Brainner provides a prioritized starting point. This allows you to analyze resumes more efficiently, focusing first on candidates who meet the most criteria. Instead of jumping between promising and irrelevant resumes, you’ll review a steady flow of well-matched candidates—and may even skip the bottom 90% of less qualified candidates entirely.

With Brainner’s approach, 100% of resumes are screened with the same level of accuracy and consistency. It’s a targeted method that reduces the risk of overlooking great candidates. Thanks to the precision of AI, only 5-10% of resumes require manual review. Additionally, Brainner converts resume screening into actionable data, offering insights like where your best candidates are coming from.

A Low-Risk, High-Reward Method

Brainner’s AI-powered system offers a low-risk, high-quality analysis that ensures you don’t miss exceptional candidates. It’s precise, efficient, and keeps your focus on a pool of well-matched candidates. By spending less time sifting through resumes, you can devote more time to meaningful interviews and informed hiring decisions.