Blind resume screening sounds like a DEI project that requires software, budget, and a committee. It is actually a 3-hour job with a spreadsheet.
Done right, it lifts the quality of your shortlist and cuts the unconscious filtering that makes your top-of-funnel less diverse than your applicant pool. Here is how to set up blind CV screening this afternoon.
What to redact, and what to keep
Redact anything that signals identity without signalling ability. That means name, photo, home address, personal pronouns, date of birth, nationality, and often university name and graduation dates.
Why university and dates? University name is a strong proxy for socioeconomic background and correlates weakly with job performance after the first role. Graduation dates leak age. Both bias reviewers in ways they rarely notice.
Keep everything that describes what the person did. Job titles, company names, responsibilities, outcomes, tools used, skills, and portfolio links that do not reveal identity.
The spreadsheet method that works
Create a Google Sheet with columns for candidate ID, redacted CV link, and one column per scorecard criterion. Assign each candidate a random ID like C037. That ID is how reviewers refer to them until the shortlist stage.
For redaction, the fastest method is a PDF editor like Preview on Mac or any free online tool. Black out the top section of each CV before uploading. For 50 candidates this takes about 90 minutes.
Reviewers score each candidate 1 to 5 on each must-have, working only from the redacted CV. Only after scoring is locked do you reveal identities for the top 10 to 15, for the phone-screen stage.
Pitfalls to avoid
Redacting so much that CVs become unreadable. Keep the work history intact. You are hiding identity, not experience.
Letting one reviewer do all the scoring. Blind screening works best with two independent reviewers per CV, then averaging. Disagreements above 2 points get a third review.
Treating blind screening as the whole answer. It fixes CV-stage bias. It does not fix interview-stage bias, which is usually larger. Pair it with a structured interview loop.
Sieve does blind screening by default, scoring CVs against your scorecard without exposing identity fields. Try it at sievecv.com.