"Passing along" resumes for people you don't know archived

I work in HR/Talent Acquisition...your best bet is to pass the resume to the recruiter of the position with a disclaimer that the resume was passed to you and you don't know the person first hand. This way it won't come off as a recommendation. Believe it or not, generally, it is no small feat to get the right talent in the door and it takes quite a bit of time and resources to accomplish that. Passing the candidate to the recruiter most likely will be appreciated and then the process of candidate evaluation will take over and if she's a good fit she'll be hired and if not they will move on to the next candidate.

I suggest offering to meet this person for a 15-minute coffee where you can vet this person yourself. Of course you can't judge someone with 100% confidence based on 15 minutes but that plus your sister's reco could give you a reasonable level of comfort.
Like you I would not feel comfortable passing this resume along, sight-unseen on the person behind it.

spqr said:

I work in HR/Talent Acquisition...your best bet is to pass the resume to the recruiter of the position with a disclaimer that the resume was passed to you and you don't know the person first hand. This way it won't come off as a recommendation. Believe it or not, generally, it is no small feat to get the right talent in the door and it takes quite a bit of time and resources to accomplish that. Passing the candidate to the recruiter most likely will be appreciated and then the process of candidate evaluation will take over and if she's a good fit she'll be hired and if not they will move on to the next candidate.

Thanks, spqr -- by "recruiter" you mean the person in HR who is responsible for screening candidates for this position?

I have passed on resumes I these instances. I'm just very clear to our recruiters that I don't know the person first hand.

Thanks, spqr -- by "recruiter" you mean the person in HR who is responsible for screening candidates for this position?

That's correct...if you work in a large organization, there would be a distinct Talent Acquisition/Recruiting function within HR. Smaller organizations sometimes roll that function into their HR Generalist duties. Pass the resume along to the HR person with a disclaimer that you haven't actually worked with this person and someone passed the resume to you.

I don't get the notion of passing on a resume with a disclaimer. To me passing on a resume represents at least an implicit endorsement, otherwise what's the value to HR? The HR person can just go and pull a resume off Monster.com and it's essentially the same thing.

Agree with spqr. Assuming the person is remotely qualified to be considered, I'd send the resume to the person who would be supervising and filling the role as an "fyi", make it clear you haven't worked with the person. I wouldn't invest time in meeting the person, getting too involved in this.

I don't think you'll be look at as being presumptuous, on the contrary, you're helping your company find out about a potential candidate and that demonstrates you're interested in your organization. Very common practice.

I don't agree that simply passing on a resume implies an endorsement - people realize that networks are big and often "loose" and that business cards and resumes get exchanged all the time between people who don't know each other.

Student_Council said:

I don't get the notion of passing on a resume with a disclaimer. To me passing on a resume represents at least an implicit endorsement, otherwise what's the value to HR? The HR person can just go and pull a resume off Monster.com and it's essentially the same thing.

Not really...you're assuming the organization that Bluepool works in has licenses, that they pay for, to actually pull resumes off of Monster. You're also assuming that the HR staff has the bandwidth and ability to search these sites to get the resumes of the individuals that have the correct skillsets for the job. There's a lot of variables that go into candidate sourcing and if someone drops a resume in your lap of a person with the experiences and skills you're looking for...it's much appreciated.

Hmm, interesting -- I guess my experience is with companies that have the HR infrastructure to find candidates with the right experience/skillz on paper, and the value-add in passing along a resume is the trust factor, ie the implicit endorsement of knowing the candidate personally, or at least knowing someone personally who knows the candidate personally. To me just forwarding a resume without an endorsement is like doing HR's job for them.

Student_Council said:

Hmm, interesting -- I guess my experience is with companies that have the HR infrastructure to find candidates with the right experience/skillz on paper, and the value-add in passing along a resume is the trust factor, ie the implicit endorsement of knowing the candidate personally, or at least knowing someone personally who knows the candidate personally. To me just forwarding a resume without an endorsement is like doing HR's job for them.

I get the impression that Bluepool works for a smaller organization since it seems recruiting is part of a general HR function. Large organizations would have the infrastructure you're referencing...smaller organizations...not so much. However, I work in Talent Acquisition for a very large very global organization. Resumes passed along in this manner are still appreciated in many large companies. Recruiting costs can skyrocket depending on many variables. For example, if I'm looking for a specific skillset that is not readily available in the marketplace then I may have to go to an agency to help source candidates. If I hire one of those agency sourced candidates then my company will be paying tens of thousands of dollars to that agency. Like I said, there are many variables that go into sourcing candidates and Monster has become a source with one of the lowest success rates for many companies. So the next time you feel like you're doing HR's job by hitting send on an email to a recruiter in your company, then think about the extra money your company will spend on sourcing that candidate instead. Multiply that spend by whatever factor if everyone else in your company acted in the same fashion and the possibility exists that budgets will go over for the year, because of many factors, but recruiting spend being one of those factors. I'll bet you that your CEO and CFO would come out and say that year end bonuses and compensation increases will be negatively impacted due to budget overages. If you think that's not a realistic scenario, then I'm here to tell you it is and I'm facing it in my company this year because of HR spend...recruiting costs being one of those overages. Just some food for thought.

Great perspectives, making me feel better about this whole thing. The prospective candidate really does have some good qualifications (although ironically she seems better qualified for a different position also open in the same department, rather than the position my sister says her friend is interested in)...

Spqr, fair enough, it's enlightening to hear the perspective of someone in the industry.
One other thing I'll point out that's a little tricky is, is a forwarded resume sans endorsement, really sans endorsement? In other words, if I pass a resume along with the right specs but make clear I'm not endorsing, if the person turns out to be a fiasco I'd still feel at least somewhat culpable. And if I was HR I might think, thanks but please don't do me any more favors.
So as an employee I'm either gonna endorse someone I feel comfortable about, or mind my own business..

Be your HR person's friend. Take a look at the resume and see if the person's experience is relevant. If the experience lines up with the opening and the candidate seems like he/she could be a good fit, then hand off the resume to your HR person. I think it's a good idea to add the disclaimer that you don't know them but the background seems like a good fit. If I were your HR person, I'd appreciate that you checked to make sure that you were handing me something relevant.

If the experience doesn't line up, then you can tell your sister that and you can't pass it on. You will have met all personal and professional obligations.

(I'm a HR Generalist/Manager who has been primarily recruiting for the past year.)

spqr said:

Passing the candidate to the recruiter most likely will be appreciated and then the process of candidate evaluation will take over and if she's a good fit she'll be hired and if not they will move on to the next candidate.

+1

What HaHa said is important...my perspective in my comments was that there was already a perceived fit with the candidate and position...at least partially.

Student Council, I would say that you should feel no more culpable than Monster would if a candidate turned out to be a bad hire. The decision to hire ultimately rests with the hiring manager with lots of input from the recruiter and interview team. If that group of people doesn't vet a candidate well enough to get a feel for their ability to succeed in the organization then that rests with them and not you for passing the resume along with a statement of 'here's a resume of a friend of a friend who seems to have some or all of the qualifications you're looking for'. Having said that, there's always the possibility that someone looks great on paper, presents well in person and then turns out to be a bag of crazy once they have the job. That happens on occasion and that is sometimes impossible to discern in the hiring process.

Student_Council said:

In other words, if I pass a resume along with the right specs but make clear I'm not endorsing, if the person turns out to be a fiasco I'd still feel at least somewhat culpable. And if I was HR I might think, thanks but please don't do me any more favors.
So as an employee I'm either gonna endorse someone I feel comfortable about, or mind my own business..

There typically is an interview process that should remove any culpability from someone merely passing along a resume. And if someone gets hired WITHOUT an interview process based solely on the fact that someone passed along a resume - well, we could see very clearly where the blame resides in that scenario.

Passing along a resume without an endorsement is still appreciated in my large global company. I always review the resume first and make sure the experience lines up as check for typos/grammar. Even without endorsement, I won't send along a terrible resume.

Want to hear something somewhat related? This is sort of an opposite situation. About six or seven years ago, a friend's son was graduating a popular Big-10 university in the midwest. I know a lot of people in the field he was interested in, so he asked if I could send his resume to some of my contacts. I said I would. He emailed me his resume, which I thought needed a lot of work. I didn't want to pass it along the way it was. So I gently made some suggestions to improve the resume. He never sent it back to me, and I never passed it to my contacts in the field.

In the meantime, he interviewed on campus for an entry-level position with a VERY desirable, new-economy company that anyone I know would love to work for. He got the job -- with the sub-optimal resume that I thought needed a lot of work! And he's been working there ever since. Has moved up the ranks and is very successful.

Go figure.

Update -- my sister's friend apparently got a job yesterday -- company interviewed her, then called her later the same day and offered her the job. She did have good credentials.