See who is already coming to #socialrecruiting summit in November!

Blog Network

SittingXlegged

Corporate recruitment: what works and what doesn't plus other musings.

Die Resume Die! follow this blog post

posted by on April 13, 2008

In this 24/7 connected world, does it make sense to start your job search with an MS Word resume that hasn't changed much since before Al Gore invented the Internet? If you're a recruiter, haven't you looked at enough resumes over the years? If you're a hiring manager, have you tired of trying to figure out who has the right goods based on a couple of pages of hyperbole? One would think, with all the incredible advances in technology over the past 20 years, that we'd have moved on to something more advanced. But the venerable resume is still the primary way that candidates endeavor to open the door to new employment opportunities.

Are there any contenders to replace the resume as we know it? The hullabaloo about the video resume seems to have died down. Sure, there are some vendors touting various advantages of a visual approach. A search for "resume" on YouTube yields about 23,700 results but  the video resume hasn't made a dent in the lives of either corporate or agency recruiters. I guess you could say that profile pages on Myspace, FaceBook, and other social networking sites are a kind of resume. But pictures of your scantily dressed friends partying hard are probably not the best way to attract a potential employer. LinkedIn profiles are probably the most widely used alternative to resumes but they are so similar to the traditional resume that one could easily argue that they actually are resumes. But the fact remains that by far the majority of people looking for their next gig will start their search by dusting off their resumes.

So there seems to be an opportunity for some enterprising people to invent something better than the traditional resume. Something modern. Something electronic. Something searchable. Something portable. Something, well, something that fits with our modern culture...

| 13 comments | flag

13 comments

Log in or register to post a reply.

  • 1 point 18 months ago

    Thank you all for your great comments! I usually reply to each comment individually but this time you?re getting just this one comment (for now). Putting aside Elaine?s and my craziness for the moment, the direction this discussion took surprised me. My simple blog followed the following path: 1) resumes haven?t changed much over the years 2) technology has advanced incredibly so why hasn?t the resume? 3) people are posting all sorts of information about themselves online and the LinkeIn profile comes closest to a traditional resume, and 4) there seems to be an opportunity here.

    Your comments are all great and they mostly discuss that there is great value in a professional recruiter reading and interpreting a resume. No argument from me on that. That?s a big part of what I get paid to do every day! Also discussed is the place an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) plays in all this. Again, no argument from me on the value of an ATS. I use one most of every day and I?m clearly a nut (there?s that crazy theme again) for keeping everything up-to-date. I chuckled at Sheila?s ?Unbelievable File?. Did you see my blog on Not Hired: http://www.ere.net/blogs/SittingXlegged/0FB218E946F44353851D89A3A7E6B23A.asp

    I?m absolutely not a big fan of standardized online application forms. As you have clearly pointed out, there?s a lot to learn in how someone presents themselves. But is there an opportunity to replace the venerable resume with something better? Not something that eliminates the need for a professional recruiter (as if that were possible) but something that makes the task of finding and placing the best candidate for the job more efficient?

    Thoughts?

  • 1 point 18 months ago

    Provider side healthcare has notoriously been behind the curve technically and my organization is no different. However, since we implemented an ATS, many trees have been saved and we plan to completely phase out "paper" applications by end of the year.

    The online application format is similar in appearance to the traditional resume we all know and love (or hate, as the case may be). The trend seems to be moving toward greater utilization of online systems and ATS. I believe this is the next generation of the traditional resume, but essentially it is still a resume. So I think reports of its demise are premature.

  • 1 point 18 months ago

    When the day comes when recruitment becomes "easy" and technology replaces what recruiters are meant to do, well then most of us will have to pack it up and move on. If you recall there used to be switchboard operators, and technology eventually replaced them. I don't want "easy" I want job security.

  • 1 point 19 months ago

    I agree with Elaine in that keyword search technology is kinda terrible. Recruiters have to weed through dozens of resumes just to come up with ?suspects?. Job seekers have to wed through dozens of pages of job listings to do the same. If everyone were to use a more common and homogenized taxonomy, matches could be made more universally. I am confident something new will emerge. The technology will be different, the pricing will be new and the risks associated with the ?pay to post/search? model will be taken off the employer and replaced with a pay for performance model.

  • 1 point 19 months ago

    There's no doubt that at some point in the future the resume as we know it today (a traditional document) will probably morph into something else. We're already starting to see this with people putting so much information out there online that is in the "non-traditional" realm. (Note to job seekers: now would be a good time to pull your rantings about your co-workers / manager off your MySpace page, while you're at it pull those pictures of you puking at your 25th birthday down too). Employers (myself included) are watching. Will the traditional document that we use to market ourselves ever completely go away? No doubt it will - ask any Creative Director who is trying to get a job at an ad agency. Their online portfolio can goes leaps and bounds beyond selling them as a candidate simply on paper. Imagine a well written cover letter coming into your organization in an email body that says "to find out more about me check out my profile at www......". Remember when we used to have candidates fill out paper applications with an actual pen? The method of marketing is sure to change but what WON'T change is the fact that a trained human being will need to interact with a job seeker, just like it's been through the ages.

  • 1 point 19 months ago

    OK, Simon. Are you trying freak me out? Sheila's post is up twice as well. Must be some kind of conspiracy.

    Yes, we will never get rid of resumes OR recruiters. maybe I'm just old fashioned, but it's the same argument I give to people who want whole books on the computer. Sorry, but to me, there is nothing better than turning the page of a real book. No screen will ever take the place of a book, IMO.

    As for resumes, same thing- as Sheila rightly pointed out, you can gather a lot of information from a resume beyond the job history. I'm somewhat pedantic, and most resumes drive me crazy. I too have a file of nutty resumes that provide some levity when I've had to look at resumes all day. But when I sit with my hiring managers and go through resumes, and make notes (with a pen!) on said resume, I can't imagine how we'd replace it. Some things are better left "low-tech".

  • 1 point 19 months ago

    I think Elaine makes some vaild points. We'll always need to go through resumes to have some quantifiable results to put to a candidate. Yes, our job is to network, get out and talk to people. Our job also means being visible in both the brick and mortar and virtual community - but in the end it still leads us back to having to go over a CV with the candidate.

    Even the most progressive of companies are requiring some type of Resume/CV when they interview a candidate. I think until there is some kind of mass change in mindset about how to interview and hire (which can take decades) that we'll be doing this.

    We need to use all the resources available to us, (ATS, networking and otherwise) but in the end it's about getting that document that has the goods on it.

    Simon, we'd all love to see a mindset shift, but we need to be realistic about what the landscape still looks like.

  • 1 point 19 months ago

    It's a pleasure to be crazy right along with Elaine. Those who are depending on technology to do the most important part of a recruiter's job are missing the whole point. Resume reading is an ART! Don't just depend on the text for information. Look at the resume as a whole and it can tell you volumes about the person who wrote it. Typos? If someone is that careless writing a resume, how careful are they going to be as a worker? Lack of capitalization and punctuation? All very well when they're texting their friends, but if they can't learn to effectively communicate with the world at large, they're not going to make it. Look at the grammar - if someone can't string a coherent sentence together, this will probably not be a productive employee. The manager will spend an inordinate amount time correcting this person's mistakes without ever being able to depend on the quality of their work. Then there is the pleasure of getting a well written, beautifully formatted resume. No one is naive enough to think that this signals the perfect employee, but if someone puts that much work into presenting him/herself well on paper, it's certainly a good place to start.

    And then there's the sheer entertainment value of a badly written resume. We all have those tough days when we need a laugh. I have a file in my desk drawer I call my Unbelievable File. In it, I keep resumes that I can't even believe that people submitted. Like the person whose entire work experience consisted of two years part-time work in a donut shop applying for a regional sales director position with a safety equipment manufacturer. Or job hopper who had 14 "permanent" jobs in less than two years, average duration about 3 weeks, whose writing was so incoherent that I had no idea what she actually did. The list goes on .... I use those resumes as a cautionary tale when I teach resume writing.

    Yes, we are all very busy, but don't make the mistake of trying to take shortcuts at the most important part of the hiring process. If you won't put the effort into finding the right employee, how can you expect the candidate to put effort into being a good employee? What goes around, comes around.

  • 1 point 19 months ago

    Hi Again Elaine,

    I deleted your duplicate post. Or did you just think you posted twice? You may be right...

    Simon

  • 1 point 19 months ago

    Hi Elaine,

    Interesting response. Well since you asked...yes, you're crazy!

    Thanks,

    Simon

  • 1 point 19 months ago

    I posted twice! Because the website had an error when I tried to post my comment. Boy, if that doesn't prove my point...

    Elaine

  • 1 point 19 months ago

    In 20 years of recruiting, I've heard this said so many times it's almost laughable. We already HAVE those tools and recruiting hasn't become easier, IMO, because the tools actually make the job harder! If you are a TRUE recruiter, your job is to talk to people. Read and screen resumes. After a few thousand, you get pretty good at it. Why would "no resumes" make that easier?

    Recruiters have to READ a resume? OMG! So, because we're all so BUSY and don't have time to read through all the resumes we get in each day, lets think of a software program that will scan all the great keywords in a resume and 'POOF' you'll have your perfect candidate. But, problem is, candidates litter their resumes with key words. You the recruiter STILL have to read how that keyword applies to the actual experience of the candidate. So, keyword search scanning goes bye-bye.

    But wait! We'll invent an Applicat Tracking System that is so smart, it eliminates the need for a real recruiter! (I actually heard that claim by every ATS company years ago and I'm still here). No more costly humans sitting at a desk reading a resume and contacting candidates. No- we'll just stockpile and sort and spit out the "relevant" candidates and get rid of recruiting once and for all! Sadly, no ATS even comes close to replacing a recruiter. As much as those sneaky ATS salespeople will try to tell you that their system will do everything from first contact to interviewing to shaking hands with the new employee, you still need a real recruiter to look at the resumes and do basically the same thing you did before. Except NOW you have a bunch of data entry crap to deal with. ATS software is great for HR tracking and personnel files. That's it.

    Call me crazy, but I yearn for the days of simple job boards and small networking groups and recruiters who actually want to talk to candidates. Isn't that what a REAL recruiter is supposed to do? Screen resumes that all look the same by calling the candidate and actually screening them. How else to qualify a candidate?

    I think it's time we stop depending so much on technology to do our jobs FOR us and pick up the damn phone and talk to people!

    Elaine C. Kaspian Sr. Recruiter

  • 1 point 19 months ago

    It is a new digital fronteir so why should an employer have to read (weed) through resumes to find possible candadites? The next generation of employment marketplace will allow employers to build a job order based on skills and experiences then see matches for that order. The matches will details skills and accomplishments in that field...no more resumes.