The agency CEO who is still reading résumés.
If you're the one filtering inbound applications, you are not the CEO. You are the recruiter. Worse, you are an expensive recruiter.
A 70-person agency CEO told us recently they read every résumé that came in for an open Senior Account Director role. Two weeks, 140 résumés, four hours of their own time. Hourly value of that time: high four figures. Hourly value of a coordinator doing the same first pass: low three figures.
They knew this. They did it anyway. The reason was the one we hear most often: I trust my judgment more than anyone else's right now. Translation: there isn't a system on the table that they trust.
The CEO who reads every résumé is the symptom. The missing rubric is the cause.
What replaces the founder's eye
A scorecard with three or four binary signals. A coordinator who runs the first pass against the rubric. A standing 30-minute Friday review where the CEO reads only the ones that pass the rubric — usually fewer than 15 résumés for a senior role.
That's not a delegation trick. It's a system that lets the CEO use their judgment on the 15 résumés where their judgment actually matters, and stops them using it on the 125 that they're going to no-thanks anyway.
The CEO still reads résumés. They just stop reading the ones that were never going to make it past the first round.