Most hourly applicants do not have a current résumé, and the ones who do mostly have a document that answers none of the questions that decide the hire. Here is what to do instead.
Why the résumé fails here
A résumé is a record of employers. For a warehouse, kitchen or care role the decision usually turns on four things it never mentions: whether someone can work the hours, whether they can get there, whether they hold the certificate, and whether they can start when you need them. Asking for one filters out people who can do the job and tells you little about the people who remain.
What to do instead
1. Ask the same questions of everyone.
Three to five, written down before you start. The value is comparability: twenty answers to one question can be read side by side in a minute, twenty résumés cannot.
2. Put availability first.
It disqualifies more people than anything else. Asking it last wastes the whole conversation.
3. Let them answer in writing, on a phone.
No account, no upload. A typed sentence from someone standing in a car park is a better signal than a document they last edited in 2019.
4. Read for specifics, not polish.
“I closed the deli on Sundays and did the temperature log” beats a well-formatted paragraph about teamwork.
5. Reply to everyone who answered.
Two lines. People who are turned down politely apply again when you are hiring in volume, and hourly hiring is always eventually in volume.
Use these without us
Copy any of the questions above into whatever you already use — they work on paper, over the phone, or in a text message. They are here because they are the ones that decide an hourly hire, not because they are ours.
If you would rather not collect the answers by hand, make a screening link: paste the job, keep these questions or write your own, and applicants answer on their phone. The answers come to your inbox and your reply goes straight to them. Free, no account, no card.
