August 20, 2025  | Makenzie Kellar

Picture this: you’re on a date with someone that you haven’t met before. Most of it is spent just getting to know who they are, but you like each other well enough that you decide to meet up again. With the basics out of the way, your conversations get to be a little more in depth. You get to see how they react when a waiter gets their order wrong at a restaurant or when traffic is worse than usual. Over the course of a few months and several more dates, you learn about their fears, their dreams, and their plans for the future.

Maybe you decide to marry this person, or maybe you decide that they’re just not a good fit for you. Either way, you know that you spent enough time with them to feel confident in your choice.
Unfortunately, none of these luxuries extend to the hiring process. 

Aside from the interview, most of your knowledge about a candidate is going to come from their resume which is nowhere near comprehensive enough to accurately hire someone who may become employed at your organization for years. To help ease the pressures of the hiring process, this article will offer some advice on how to make the most of the resources at your disposal so your organization can find its perfect match!

Referrals: The “I Met Them Through a Friend” of Hiring

If the idea of sorting through resumes makes you want to never set foot in the office again, you may want to start the hiring process by asking your employees for referrals. They understand what the job entails better than anyone and will have an idea of who would be a good fit. Your employee will likely recommend someone that they’ve known for at least a little while and can vouch for in terms of work ethic and personality. After all, if their name is associated with this hire, they’ll want to give you the best!

While your hiring pool will likely be too small to work with if referrals are the only way you look for candidates, it can be a great way to both start the process and involve your employees.

Finding Candidates: The Online Approach

The one thing dating and hiring still manage to have in common is that much of the process has shifted to the digital space over the last several years. While finding jobs through networking is still common practice, Pew Research Center was reporting as early as 2015 that 54% of all adults and 90% of recent job seekers had looked online for potential opportunities.

The good news is that there are plenty of options out there that you can take advantage of for free! If your organization has Facebook or Instagram, all it takes is a post to let the public know you’ve got a job available. 
To make extra sure that your opening is shown to people actively looking for work, list the opening on LinkedIn, Indeed, Handshake, and more. While doing this may require a bit more tech expertise than you currently have, there are plenty of online tutorials to show you how it all works. A bit of time spent learning how to use these tools can significantly increase your number of applicants.

To get the most out of your post, remember to include a concise and accurate job description and make it clear how much they’ll be earning. You’re not going to attract the best of the best if those people don’t know what they’ll be doing or if the job pays enough to cover rent. 

Judging a Resume: Swipe Left or Swipe Right

Between word of mouth and listing your job opening online, you should hopefully receive several different resumes to look through. However, that still leaves you with the task of figuring out which candidates you want to call in for an interview, which can feel overwhelming if you’re not sure where to start.

Before looking at a single resume, ask yourself what are your “must haves” in a candidate. Does a candidate need to have college experience or a specific degree? Do you need someone who has worked in this field before and knows the ropes? Can you train your candidates to get them the certifications they need, or do they need to have those from the start? Starting with the “must haves” is a great way to get a clearer picture of what you want and narrow down a pool of candidates. 

Just remember that “must have” traits are different than traits that would make a perfect candidate. While a candidate may not have everything that you want, so long as they appear promising and have what you need, they are still worth considering. 

If you want to speed this process along, asking yourself what your job candidate “must haves” are earlier in the hiring process and include it in your job listings. That way, every candidate you receive should be one that you could theoretically hire on the spot.

Your “must have” traits will probably be what are called hard skills, defined as “measurable skills you acquire through education, training or hands-on experience.” These include things like coding, using different kinds of software, managing finances, etc. But just because someone knows how to do a job, that doesn’t mean they’ll be a good fit. 

Your next step will be to look for things on a resume that indicate a candidate has the soft skills you’re looking for. These can’t be measured as easily as hard skills, but include essential attributes such as the ability to communicate with others, manage time, manage projects, and work independently. If they’ve included hobbies or previous job experience, the activities they chose to list can give you a better sense of who they are.

While this list is not exhaustive, it’s a place to start when all you have to judge a candidate’s character is a piece of paper. From this jumping-off-point, and as you work through interviews, continue to expand upon your “must haves,” desired soft skills, and areas of compromise.

AI: To Algorithm or Not to Algorithm

While the hiring process always adds another item to a manager’s to do list, it shouldn’t take too long to look over five or so resumes. But what if you get twenty? What about fifty? What if your online posting picks up traction and you end up with over a hundred? These days, some companies are relying on AI to sort through candidates while saving time with one of the most notable among them being Amazon.

Unfortunately, this approach is not the silver bullet that many think it is. As BBC reported, not only does using AI risk filtering out quality candidates, but can also discriminate against candidates based on age and sex. 

A study conducted by the University of Washington found that even just a candidate’s name can open them up to racial and gender discrimination from the AI used to sort their resumes. Even if an AI system was developed that did not discriminate at all, the candidates you reject may not speak well about your organization in the future if they find out a real person didn’t even bother to look at their application. In fact, a 2023 Pew Research study found that about 66% of Americans would not even want to apply for a job if AI was used to assist in making the hiring decision. 

If you’re only getting a handful of applications, it’s best to avoid AI altogether. At that point, you’ll probably be spending more time putting the resumes into your AI system of choice and writing the prompt for your hiring criteria than it would take you to just review them yourself. However, if you have enough applications coming through that using AI is a serious consideration, make sure you speak with an HR professional first to make sure you aren’t opening yourself up to any legal issues in the future. 

Remember, AI is a tool meant to assist you in your work and should not be making this decision for you. Use your best judgement when determining how much to let a computer take the reins when you’re the one with the real understanding of what would make someone a valuable addition to your team.

Final Thoughts

While it’s impossible to go over every hiring trick in the span of this article, these tips are enough to set you on the right path. That being said, there is still one more thing worth remembering. Just like dating, hiring is a two-way street where both parties need to be the right fit for each other. If you manage to find the perfect candidate, what is it about your organization that would make them want to work for you over somebody else?
Your organization should be a place that your employees can be proud of. Treat people with respect, take concerns and complaints seriously, and make sure your work culture is one that welcomes new hires and encourages them as they learn about their job. You can become the best hiring manager in the world, but that doesn’t mean much if your employees don’t stick around.