Anonymise CVs before shortlisting
Blind shortlisting only works if the identifying details are really gone. This removes them from the file rather than covering them, and produces a Word copy the panel can annotate.
- Names, emails and phone numbers are taken out of the file itself.
- The result is a .docx, so a panel can comment on it.
- Candidate documents never leave the device they were opened on.
Covering a name is not removing it
A black box drawn over a name looks correct on screen and leaves the name in the file underneath, where selecting the text or opening the document in a different reader brings it straight back. For blind shortlisting that is not a cosmetic failure: the whole exercise is void if any panel member can recover what was supposed to be hidden.
The characters are taken out of the page content here and the mark is drawn afterwards, so what remains in the file is the mark. Check the result before circulating it. Pattern matching finds every email address reliably and finds unusual names less reliably, and only the person running the process knows what was meant to go.
Why a Word file rather than a PDF
A shortlisting panel writes on things. Scores in a margin, a note against an unexplained gap, a question to raise at interview. That is far easier in a document than in a flattened PDF, and it keeps the annotations attached to the candidate rather than living in a separate spreadsheet nobody updates.
The conversion keeps the structure rather than flattening it: headings stay headings, dated lists stay lists, and a two-column CV comes across as a table rather than as interleaved lines. A CV that arrived as a scan is recognised on the way through, so the Word file is real text rather than a picture.
Nothing about this needs an account or a server. Applications are personal data by any definition, and the usual answer to anonymising them involves uploading the entire pile to somebody who is not a party to the hiring.
Does it remove the photograph?
No. It removes text. Remove a photograph with the redaction tool directly, where you can draw over a region.
Can I do a batch of CVs?
Add them all. The plan runs over each file in turn and produces one Word file for each.
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