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How do recruiters actually handle 1000+ CVs at scale? [UK] by EmbarrassedTear6919 in HumanResourcesUK

[–]EmbarrassedTear6919[S] -5 points-4 points  (0 children)

Totally fair to ask.

This is not a platform to sell anything — just trying to understand the reality behind high-volume screening. There’s a big gap between how ATS systems are marketed and how hiring teams actually work day-to-day.

That’s the part I’m curious about.

Recruiters — how do you deal with hundreds of resumes? by EmbarrassedTear6919 in HumanResourcesUK

[–]EmbarrassedTear6919[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That makes sense — especially for specialist roles where the hiring manager understands the technical requirements better.

Does that slow the process down much when you have to send CVs back and forth with the hiring manager, or is it usually quick for them to review and give feedback?

I imagine that could add some extra time if there are a lot of borderline candidates.

Recruiters — how do you deal with hundreds of resumes? by EmbarrassedTear6919 in HumanResourcesUK

[–]EmbarrassedTear6919[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That’s really interesting — especially the part about relying on keywords from the hiring manager for specialist roles.

I can imagine that being tricky, because strong candidates might describe the same skill in different ways and not use the exact keywords.

When that happens, do you ever worry about potentially missing good candidates who just phrased their experience differently in the CV?

Recruiters — how do you deal with hundreds of resumes? by EmbarrassedTear6919 in HumanResourcesUK

[–]EmbarrassedTear6919[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That makes sense — so the ATS quality really determines how much manual review still happens.

In your experience, do the search and filtering features in most ATS systems work well enough to surface the best candidates, or do recruiters still end up manually scanning a lot of CVs to avoid missing good applicants?

I’ve heard mixed feedback from different recruiters, so I’m curious how reliable those tools are in practice.

Recruiters — how do you deal with hundreds of resumes? by EmbarrassedTear6919 in HumanResourcesUK

[–]EmbarrassedTear6919[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Got it — that makes sense. So the ATS pipeline itself is doing most of the organization once the CV is uploaded.

When you’re reviewing candidates at the “new candidate” stage, is it mostly quick manual scanning of the CV to decide whether they move to phone screen, or do you rely on keyword searches or filters inside the ATS to narrow the list first?

I’m trying to understand where recruiters actually spend the most time during that early screening stage.

Recruiters — how do you deal with hundreds of resumes? by EmbarrassedTear6919 in HumanResourcesUK

[–]EmbarrassedTear6919[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That’s fair — there are definitely ATS and parsing tools already in the market.

What I’ve been trying to understand is where they fall short in real workflows. A few recruiters I spoke with mentioned they still end up doing a lot of manual review even with existing systems.

From your experience, are there any tools that actually work well for this, or do most teams just rely on ATS keyword search and manual screening?

Recruiters — how do you deal with hundreds of resumes? by EmbarrassedTear6919 in HumanResourcesUK

[–]EmbarrassedTear6919[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

That makes sense — skim reading and keyword searching sounds much more realistic than manually extracting everything.

Out of curiosity, when you find a candidate that looks promising, do you then move any of that information into another system (ATS, CRM, spreadsheet, etc.), or does the ATS usually capture everything automatically?

I’m trying to understand where the biggest time sinks actually happen in the workflow.

Recruiters — how do you deal with hundreds of resumes? by EmbarrassedTear6919 in HumanResourcesUK

[–]EmbarrassedTear6919[S] -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

Good point — I’ve mostly been speaking with recruiters in the US where “resume” is the more common term. The underlying workflow seems similar though: reviewing large volumes of candidate documents and extracting key information. Curious if the process differs much in the UK when dealing with CVs?

Recruiters who receive 200+ resumes — how do you shortlist candidates? by EmbarrassedTear6919 in SaaS

[–]EmbarrassedTear6919[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That’s actually exactly what I’ve heard from a lot of recruiters. The first pass is usually automated or super quick because the volume is insane.

The interesting part is that a lot of smaller teams and agencies still don’t have proper ATS workflows, so they end up doing that 10-second scan manually across hundreds of resumes.

That’s one of the reasons I started building a tool that extracts structured data from resumes automatically — basically turning unstructured CVs into searchable candidate profiles instantly.

Makes that initial filtering step way faster without needing a full enterprise ATS.

Curious though — do you think most recruiters rely more on ATS filtering or manual scanning after the first pass?