with Mary Franzen

Do you agree with the notion that collecting and managing résumés through email is fast, easy, convenient—and free? Really? Just because email is already installed on your computer, that doesn’t mean it comes without cost. If you’re using email to manage incoming résumés, think about all the manual labor that happens on your end once those hopeful applicants flood your inbox. I think you’ll soon agree that email is far from a free way to manage incoming résumés.

To prove the theory, let’s see if any part of this scenario sounds familiar to you:

It’s 4:30pm and, before you go home, you decide to peruse your HR inbox and see if you can find two people to fill Job X and Job Y. Reading 105 résumés is a lot, so you better get started right away. You begin by downloading each résumé—one at a time—and saving it into a folder on your desktop. You’re hoping that the file name for each each résumé contains the person’s name. If not, it’s time for a little sleuthing because you just downloaded 15 résumés, and 4 are simply named, “Resume.doc”.

Next comes the printing. Screening résumés is a collaborative effort in your office, so hard copies are the best way to go. Yes, that means “Control-P” 105 times. Typically the cover letter is in the body of each email. You may have to print that out too, else risk having no clue which position “Robert Jenkins” was looking to fill.

Your paperwork isn’t done yet. Since you’re filling two positions, next you must organize the stacks of résumés and cover letters by job. Finally, it’s now time to collate, photocopy, and distribute to the team.

Tired yet? At this point you haven’t even reviewed a résumé, or met to share feedback on an applicant. In fact, you don’t even know if there’s anybody qualified hiding in that disheveled stack of papers you just spent over 30 minutes (or more) organizing. But we all know that the reality is you probably saw those 105 unread messages and decided to tackle hiring another day. It’s time to go home—without a headache.

In terms of time, effort and office supplies, I argue email may be the most expensive way to manage the résumé review process. What do you think? At least in the old days the applicant printed out the resume for you!