5 Signs Your Recruitment Agency Needs Automated CV Screening
Not every recruitment agency needs automated CV screening. But if you're experiencing any of these five signs, it might be time to consider it. Here's how to know when manual screening has stopped working for your business.
1. You're Reading CVs at 10pm Regularly
Let's be honest: if you're regularly taking CV screening home or staying late to get through applications, something's broken in your process.
Why It Matters
Recruitment is demanding enough without reading CVs in your free time. If your evenings and weekends are being eaten by CV screening, you're heading toward burnout. Plus, let's be real: your judgement at 10pm after a full day's work is not as sharp as it is at 10am.
What It Costs You
Work-life balance, primarily. But also quality. Tired recruiters make poor hiring decisions. They miss details, rush through assessments, and sometimes pick the first acceptable candidate rather than the best one.
Quick Solution
Set a hard boundary: no CV screening after 6pm or on weekends. If you cannot hit that boundary with your current volume, you either need to hire more recruiters or automate the initial screening. Most agencies find automation is the more cost-effective option.
2. Great Candidates Are Getting Lost in High-Volume Roles
You post a mid-level developer role and get 120 applications. You diligently read the first 40, fairly review the next 30, then start to skim. By CV #80, you're barely looking. CVs #81-120? They get a cursory glance if you have time.
Why It Matters
Your best candidate might be #94. The perfect person for the role who happened to apply on Friday afternoon when you were already exhausted from screening. If you never properly review their CV because of decision fatigue, you've failed your client and missed a potential placement.
What It Costs You
Lost placements. Disappointed clients who feel you didn't find them the best candidate. Damage to your reputation if candidates later place successfully through a competitor who did properly review their CV.
Quick Solution
For any role that attracts 50+ applications, use technology to handle the initial screening. This ensures every single candidate gets a fair review, and you focus your human time on the 15-20 who genuinely match requirements.
3. Your Team Spends More Time Screening Than Interviewing
Track how your recruiters spend their time for a week. If they're spending more hours reading CVs than they are actually speaking to candidates and clients, your process is upside down.
Why It Matters
Reading CVs is necessary but low-value work. The real value a recruiter provides is in interviews, relationship building, market knowledge, and making nuanced judgements about fit. If they're spending most of their time on low-value tasks, you're not getting the best return on their salary.
What It Costs You
Opportunity cost. Every hour spent on CV screening is an hour not spent building client relationships, improving candidate experience, or closing placements.
Quick Solution
Set a target: screening should take no more than 20-30% of a recruiter's time. If you're consistently above that, automate the screening process so your team can focus on the high-value activities only humans can do.
4. You're Losing Candidates to Faster Agencies
A great candidate applies to your role on Monday morning. You're busy, so you plan to review new CVs on Wednesday. By Thursday, you call to schedule an interview. They tell you they've already had two interviews with another agency and are awaiting an offer.
Why It Matters
The best candidates get snapped up quickly. If your screening process is so slow that you're regularly losing people before you even review their CV properly, you're always going to get second pick of the talent pool.
What It Costs You
The best placements. Top candidates are off the market in days, not weeks. If you cannot move quickly from application to first interview, you'll miss them.
Quick Solution
Set a service level for yourself: review all new CVs within 24 hours. If you cannot hit that target consistently with manual screening, automation is essential. The agencies beating you to candidates are probably already using it.
5. Your Recruiters Are Burned Out from Admin Work
Check in with your team. If they're expressing frustration about feeling like "all they do is read CVs", or if they're disengaged because the work feels repetitive and tedious, that's a warning sign.
Why It Matters
Good recruiters want to recruit: build relationships, make great placements, understand their market. They don't want to spend hours doing admin work that feels like it could be automated. If they're burned out on CV screening, they'll either underperform or leave for a role that uses their skills better.
What It Costs You
Staff turnover. Recruiting and training new recruiters is expensive and time-consuming. Retaining good people means giving them work that's engaging and valuable, not drowning them in repetitive admin.
Quick Solution
Ask your team what parts of their job they find most valuable and most tedious. If CV screening consistently comes up as tedious, prioritise automating it. Your team will thank you, and you'll likely see improved retention and performance.
The Bottom Line
If you're experiencing even one of these signs, it's worth exploring automation. If you're experiencing three or more, it's urgent. Your manual screening process has stopped scaling with your business, and something needs to change.
The good news is that modern CV screening tools are affordable, simple to use, and can usually be up and running within a day. The ROI is typically obvious within the first month.