You posted a job. You got 200 applications. Now it’s Sunday evening and you’re still on CV number 60, your eyes hurt, and you’ve forgotten what a good candidate even looks like.
This is not a you problem. It’s a process problem.
Set your criteria before you open a single CV
Most people open the first CV and start forming opinions before they know what they’re looking for. That’s how you end up with an inconsistent shortlist shaped by whoever happened to apply first.
Before you touch any CV, write down your three non-negotiables and your three nice-to-haves. Non-negotiables are instant rejections if missing. Nice-to-haves are tiebreakers. That’s it. Keep it to six criteria or you’ll spend more time scoring than reading.
Build a triage system, not a reading system
Stop reading CVs. Start triaging them.
Pass one: scan for the three non-negotiables. Takes 30 seconds per CV. Anything missing gets rejected immediately. You’ll cut 40 to 60 percent of the pile in the first pass without breaking a sweat.
Pass two: score the survivors on your nice-to-haves. One to five per criteria. Takes two minutes per CV. At the end you have a ranked list, not a gut feeling.
Pass three: human judgment on the top 15 percent. This is where you actually read. By now you’re looking at 20 CVs, not 200.
The volume problem doesn’t go away
Even with a good system, 200 CVs takes hours. And the next role will bring 300. The math doesn’t improve as you hire faster.
That’s where AI screening earns its place. Not to replace your judgment, but to run passes one and two automatically, calibrated to your exact criteria, so you walk in to a ranked shortlist rather than a pile.
Sieve does exactly that. Upload your full applicant pool, set your criteria, and get a scored and ranked shortlist in minutes. Try it free at sievecv.com.