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Be careful, if HR screens resumes then they effectivly have a last call on highering decisions by rejecting people before anyone else sees them.

From what I have seen the only useful function for HR in the highering process is a background verification check. Aka did John Smith work at your company from 2000-2004. Anything else is risky.

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I agree that HR can screen out some otherwise qualified people. I've seen that from both sides. But I think that if the criteria you provide to HR are sufficiently broad and high-level, they can be helpful. If the candidate clearly has no relevant (as defined by the hiring team/manager) education or experience, HR doesn't need to send that one down.

I think the worry would be that HR will miss a lot of people with relevant experience. "Oh, John Smith only has experience in C#, but we need someone with experience in .Net".

A partial solution to that is a better briefing and education for the HR team. Another partial solution is to make the selection criteria broader. Make clear that they should include the candidate when in doubt. But if for example you're looking for a team lead for an important project, you can certainly specify requirements that the HR team can handle, such as "must have 5 years of work experience. Must have team lead experience." etc.

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