Now I am trying to hire for a variety of positions, some on the more professional side, some more entry level. Right now I am having a hard time rejecting people based purely on their resumes because: A.) We've all had to go through the hiring gauntlet so I want to give people their best chance. B.) How can you distill a person to just what a few words on a pdf say?
Obviously I am going to pick the best candidate for the job as that is best for everybody but simultaneously don't want to reject people out of hand, nor do I want to interview people that won't succeed and make people feel bad about themselves unnecessarily.
Thoughts?
I don't try to turn it off. Instead I just write empathic rejection emails when necessary. I always reject with a reason, sometimes it's inexperience, sometimes it's a sloppy cover letter, sometimes there was just someone better. It's a bit mean to say I rejected someone because of typos in their resume, so a nicer way is to reject all resume screens with a link: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/09/08/sorting-resumes-2/
Interview as many people as you have the stamina for. Often the best people are those who barely passed the bar, so a wider bar could help. But try to keep the screening brief. Maybe a half hour chat and then rejection letter to those who didn't make the cut that day.
Even then, you absolutely cannot distill how successful an employee someone will be down to a single document, but equally, you can't interview everyone - so there's some level of pragmatism that you have to exercise to be able determine who to interview. My experience here is that the filter criteria doesn't have to be the typical screening that a bunch of us probably are frustrated by (e.g., "does the resumé mention Python? No. Route it to /dev/null").
I've tried the following.
1. I'll filter by folks that I think have demonstrated some interesting commitment in their journey to where they are. For example, interesting side projects along with their professional experience, or a non-traditional route to their role (e.g., didn't attend college for the "expected" subject). My experience here has been that these folks often have different insights that have correlated to being easy to work with, and fruitful for the teams that I've engaged with.
2. I'll try and determine folks that are able to communicate in their resumé some particular outcome that shows that they had a wider perspective than their immediate role. This tended to me to show that the person was able to think a bit wider than the task that was on their plate, which again has correlated with good teammates to me.
2. Have a set of pre-defined interview topics or resume rubrics designed to discover and test for these skills.
3. Ask everyone the same questions. Grade everyone the same way.
4. Don't ask "Is this candidate good?", but instead ask "Is this candidate better than the others, based on the scores from my defined rubrics?"
5. If something feels "wrong", walk away. Sometimes your subconscious knows things your conscious mind hasn't discovered yet.
I started my professional career recently, and when I was applying to jobs a timely rejection was the second best outcome to me - I knew that avenue was closed so I could focus efforts elsewhere.
You're just overestimating how badly people take rejections - especially when all they've done is submit a resume so far.