Best response to "servant of god" listed on resume

What is the most professional way to evaluate this kind of personal and unorthodox language on a resume?

Anything unusual or unprofessional that is not an obvious advantage should relegate the resume to the bottom of the pile.

We had such situations in Belgium:

• An employer refused a candidate because his dog had been abused by black people, so he couldn't hire a black person to work with him in his shop.
• Another employer refused a candidate because she prominently wore an islamic head-scarf, which might chase away several customers (the employer had several women with head-scarfs working in the background of the company, but did not want them as sales representatives).

Those employers were shown on public TV and the government as blaming them as full-blown racists, so this is what happened:

Lots of other employers went to a lawyer and asked for a neutral refusal letter, and in case a candidate is to be refused for whatever reason, just send that letter. No phone call, no explanation, just send that letter.

As a result, some people (like me) went as a candidate for a job interview, did something wrong, I was rejected, got the nothing-saying letter, and even when I called in order to ask what I did wrong, the employers just referred to the letter and threw down the phone. It has taken several years before I realised what I had done wrong (thanks to an intermediate headhunter), so from the point of view of a candidate, such a neutral letter is pure horror, but for an employer like you, it's pure heaven (if I can use a religious reference 😀).

I see two very separate issues here:

(1) Hiring a person who considers themself a "Servant of God". I think most people would agree that this is likely to be entirely reasonable even in a diverse workplace, and unlikely to be reasonable grounds to deny someone an interview.

(2) The mindset of someone who considers it reasonable to describe themself as a "Servant of God" on a professional resume for a secular position. It raises questions about professionalism, invites speculation about tolerance for diversity, and implies a lack of boundaries between faith and the needs of a position of public trust.

There are suitable ways to encode your faith on your resume, even something a simple as listing volunteer work for a religious organization; someone who trumpets their faith without mentioning matching deeds may be filtering themself out of even positions at religious institutions.

(And in any case, throwing in a line like that can easily confuse automated resume parsers and cause a candidate's skills or experience to not make it into a screening database; many of my 2024 resume edits were narrowly focused on adapting my format to online screening tools.)

In the specific case mentioned, I would reject the resume and send the same bland form letter sent to all other rejected applicants, for example: "after carefully considering your resume we are moving forward with other candidates who more closely align with our current needs." There's no value to specifying a reason, only risk.

(added after reading comments)

And as a side note about "tolerance for diversity" -- I don't just accept religious diversity in the workplace, I would actively seek it out if that were legal -- it's way easier to arrange shift coverage when not everyone celebrates the same religious and cultural holidays in the same ways. The issue is not with diversity and tolerance, the issue is someone who loudly proclaims their faith in such an unusual way on their resume, especially because in the US in 2025, those who proclaim their faith the loudest are often those who display the least tolerance for those who follow other paths.

tl;dr: The issue is not my tolerance for their views, the issue is that I now have to worry about THEIR tolerance for MY views. Much easier to concentrate my energy on the 200 resumes with no red flags.

While the location is not stated in the question, in locations where there are religious anti-discrimination laws for employment, taking this statement on the resume into consideration at all when making any employment decision is likely illegal.

To use the United States as an example, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits religious discrimination in employment decisions.

2 USC 1311(a) states:

(a)Discriminatory practices prohibited All personnel actions affecting covered employees shall be made free from any discrimination based on—

(1)race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, within the meaning of section 703 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (42 U.S.C. 2000e–2);

42 USC 2000e-2(a) clarifies more exactly which employment practices are prohibited:

(a)Employer practices

It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer—

(1)to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin; or

(2)to limit, segregate, or classify his employees or applicants for employment in any way which would deprive or tend to deprive any individual of employment opportunities or otherwise adversely affect his status as an employee, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

The definition of 'religion' for this purpose is given in 42 USC 2000e(j):

The term “religion” includes all aspects of religious observance and practice, as well as belief, unless an employer demonstrates that he is unable to reasonably accommodate to an employee’s or prospective employee’s religious observance or practice without undue hardship on the conduct of the employer’s business.

It would be extremely difficult to successfully argue that someone merely having the phrase "servant of god" on their resume creates an undue burden for the employer.

While some may consider this to be unprofessional to include on one's resume, it would almost certainly be protected under U.S. law and basing an employment decision in whole or in part on it would almost certainly be unlawful under the Civil Rights Act.

Some have suggested that inclusion of this on a resume could suggest that the prospective employee might engage in unprofessional conduct during the job. To be clear, this assumption is a prejudice by definition and it is exactly the sort of prejudice that employment anti-discrimination laws seek to prohibit from being used as a basis of hiring decisions. If the person is hired and actually engages in behavior that discriminates against or harasses others on the basis of religion (or any other protected class,) then that can certainly be addressed, but you cannot legally assume that someone will do that simply because they say they are a "servant of god."

In the U.S., the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is tasked with handling complaints of unlawful employment discrimination and it also provides advice to employers to help them avoid engaging in unlawful discrimination. In its document Best Practices for Eradicating Religious Discrimination in the Workplace (PDF), the EEOC states that:

Employers should allow religious expression among employees to the same extent that they allow other types of personal expression that are not harassing or disruptive.

It further states:

Employers should train managers to gauge the actual disruption posed by religious expression in the workplace, rather than merely speculating that disruption may result.

Of course, laws will vary by jurisdiction, but I use U.S. federal law as an example here. Individual states may have laws that place even more restrictions on religious discrimination by employers (but not less restrictive ones.) And, of course, other countries will have entirely different laws, though the mention in the question of "religious identity is protected and cannot be a basis for hiring decisions" suggests that your country likely has similar laws in this regard that you should familiarize yourself with more thoroughly before making any employment decisions in this case. Make sure to use trustworthy sources from your own jurisdiction on this, ideally an employment lawyer in your area or at least official advice from your government.

This is about risk. You must choose candidates with the least risk of causing problems, not just the best qualified or most experienced.

I don't see how employing someone who wrote this is a safe bet and investing time to find out may be a poor investment in time. How could you ever be sure this person will respect the secular nature of your workplace?

A CV and cover letter should be crafted with some care because they are items which prevent your application going in the bin. First impressions are what matters and in using that expression they are making a very strong first impression, but not necessarily one which matches you requirements for an employee.

By the way, the expression "servant of God" has a particular meaning in the Catholic faith, so it's a little weird for me to see someone categorize themselves this way.

Whether your applicant made a misjudgement or was being quite deliberate in making such a prominent statement is not the issue. The issue is whether there are applicants who have less risk attached to them for your business. There are enough risks with the best candidates, don't take more than you have to.

A different angle: can this be a "setup" where the applicant is fishing for a response to the title?

This is a weird thing to put on the resume, and it is really pushing the point on religion and applications. The applicant can be clueless.. But it can perhaps also be a point that is being made.

Perhaps someone feels like their rejections are due to religion (and handle it badly)? Perhaps someone is trying some "social experiment" with and without the line? Perhaps someone is fishing for a lawsuit? Or for a newspaper article?

I would be careful for this reason alone.

There is no "right answer" to this kind of question. The "professional" way to respond to a resume like this is 1) If you don't like it or it goes against your "professional ethic", answer like you would any CV you reject - just be nice, the world doesn't need your opinion at every turn 2) If it doesn't bother you, treat the CV like any other professional CV.

It’s one thing to say that you are a Christian, or Muslim, or Hindu, or Atheist. Someone saying that, they should be able to do their job with no problems caused by their religion, and without problems caused by others having problems with their religion.

“I am a servant of god”, thats an entirely different matter. I know my local vicar quite well. You often see him on his bicycle with his little daughter in his trailer. He would not call himself a servant of God. His job is to support his congregation and serve them. God will be doing just fine looking after himself. He doesn’t need servants.

Hiring someone who calls himself “servant of god” is asking for trouble. What do you think happens if I’m a coworker when he finds out that I’m an atheist? And if they find out that my husband is a transgender man?

Make sure to be careful not to refuse his application for religious reasons, but that is what HR is for.

I would count such writing on one's résumé a strong negative sign. As others have pointed out, it's unusual for that kind of thing to go on such an important place in one's résumé.

However, there's a clever trick to professionally communicate the idea by pretending as if it were a professional title. If I were in such a situation, I might indicate to colleagues that we don't value previous experience as a "Servant of God" the same way we don't favor an artisan or an auto mechanic. An even more generic response might be "I don't see this title would be a good match for our position. I would prefer that we move on to the next candidate". In most cases such responses will be fine without getting yourself too much trouble, but YMMV as local culture may come differently.

Whenever I am interviewing candidates with my colleagues, and also when evaluating resumes.

I get each person to rank the entries as 10 most desirable and 0 to ignore. Then I average them and we move to the next stage.

My advice is to stop obsessing over it and just vote, how you each feel.