You're not alone. In fact, I have yet to meet anyone who enjoys reading resumes, and I can certainly say that it's my least favorite thing to do as an HR professional.

Although I do appreciate the fact that resumes are an easy way for applicants to profile their education and experience, and that they provide some indication of an individual's communication style (assuming they wrote it themselves), I find resume reviews to be a very frustrating way to identify applicants who should progress to the next stage of the hiring process. In particular...

• Resume reviews are tedious and time-consuming. Because each resume tends to be written in a slightly different format and style, it can be tough to find information on applicants' core qualifications beneath all of the other details that they've chosen to include. This takes time. In fact, the median amount of time that recruiters spent reading a resume, according to a recent TalentSpring survey, was 3 minutes, which can amount to hours or days of reading, if you receive more than just a few applications. And I seriously question the quality of resume reviews that take any less time than that, unless you're a speed reader with a knack for finding references to skills, abilities and other competencies.
• Many of the solutions for decreasing resume review time have serious flaws. For example, automated keyword searches and parsing programs can only look for the terms that you input, in exactly the way you've written them. There is the risk that a very talented applicant may decide to use a different term to refer to the same key skill that you've included in your filter (e.g., acronyms), which means the possibility of automatically weeding out a potentially great hire.
• Worst of all, applying with a resume requires virtually no effort on the part of applicants, beyond the work they put into writing it in the first place. What this means is that applicants can send hundreds of copies electronically to any position that seems to be even slightly relevant (and in many cases, completely irrelevant) to their background and qualifications. The pain, then, is that hiring managers have to wade through many resumes that are completely inappropriate for the job in question. Of course, hiring managers should make it quick and easy for people to apply, so that they don't frustrate top contenders, but they should at least require SOME effort in order to self-select out those who haven't bothered to do much beyond hit the "Apply Here" button.

  Although it's not a perfect solution, there is a better and faster way to screen applicants that just requires a little IT know-how... 

Structured Application Forms

If any of the points above resonate with you, you may want to consider developing an online structured application form that directly asks applicants to provide information on their job-related education and experience. You can create these fairly easily using various online survey software, although you may want to use a professional web designer for more customized work without the software vendor's branding. By the way, a job analysis is critical in creating these forms and making sure that any type of screening or assessment method you use is helpful and legally defensible.

For example, if you're hiring for a Human Resources Manager who has a university degree, 10 years of experience, and has completed the CHRP designation, just ask for that information directly...

http://www.hireinsightgroup.com/hrmansaf.html

In this case, the applicant spends about 10 minutes inputting data on their background, all of which is directly related to success as an HR Manager, and which you can quickly review in the resulting database. Done correctly, a structured application form and resulting report can eliminate all of the key frustrations listed above, greatly decreasing the time you spend reviewing applicants while increasing the quality of that review.

If interested, here's the type of report I'm referring to above, or at least a template of one that I recently created for a client. As you can see, the SAF has allowed us to filter applicants in the report (e.g., only those who have CHRP designation are listed) and sort them by years of experience in HR. It would probably take about 3 minutes to review 50 applications, at least to identify the most qualified individuals, and even provides further relevant details on functional experience...AND, with the right software, you can run an interesting analysis on the data (see the graphs at the end of the report).

http://www.hireinsightgroup.com/appcomphrm.pdf

Any feedback, questions or comments are welcome!

-Chad