3 reasons to stop reading resumes
Overwhelmed with applicants? Desperate to find a way to sort the best from the rest? Matchpoint Careers has an answer:
Stop reading resumes. Right now. Here’s why:
1. Resumes don’t tell you what you need to know.
- Resumes say next to nothing about the strongest predictors of future performance – a candidate’s behavior patterns and general mental ability. Nor do they reveal much about a candidate’s engagement – the other major driver of performance – or how well he or she builds and sustains business relationships.
- They give even less away about the context for past achievements. Was that $1,000,000 consulting sale sweated every step of the way, or did the client ask for a bid on a project already scoped? Were those revenue targets exceeded in a boom year or at a time when the overall market was shrinking? Who else was involved in these deals, these projects? How did other jobholders perform against the same challenges and opportunities?
- They don’t tell you anything about how a candidate will fit in this specific job in your organization. The business pages are full of lurid accounts of stars in one company who sank without trace in another.
2. Resumes say lots about things that don’t matter.
- Length of experience, skills and knowledge are pretty weak predictors of future performance, but you learn lots about them from a resume.
- Group performance is only tangentially related to individual potential, yet most facts on a resume (revenue figures, cost savings, etc) relate to work done in teams.
- Resumes are records of the past. What you care about is a candidate’s future.
- Hobbies, organizational affiliations and choice of font and screening-friendly keywords tell you nothing about someone’s ability to do the job, but might (and usually do – especially if you use resume screening software) influence your decision.
3. Resumes are plain unreliable
- About 25% of new hires admit they gave less than accurate information during recruitment.
- Most of the other 75% did the same, only they call it ‘tailoring’ their resume to the job – leaving out irrelevant information (like that time they got fired) and highlighting anything with a link to what they think the recruiter is looking for.
- The résumé fails to disclose the setting someone’s work – the economic conditions in the industry at the time, the company culture, the style and behavior of the individual’s boss. These influence – often hugely – the results.
So why are resumes the standard form of presenting candidates?
Because of history. When formal job applications started, all we knew about or cared about was skill. Today we know so much more about what really matters in a job and what really defines an effective worker, but we are stuck with our legacy systems and our legacy mindset. Keyword searching, automated screening and other whizzy technologies can’t fix the core problem: the resume does not talk about what we need to know.
What alternative is there?
Screen on what matters for success in the job. Technology has enabled rapid assessment on the real drivers of performance, affordably and at scale. The downside – candidates have to complete an hour’s assessments instead of polishing their resumes. But given how long traditional job searching and resume preparation takes, this probably represents a time saving. And any candidate who can’t be bothered to complete an assessment – or who doesn’t want you to see what they’re really like – is probably not someone you want in your business.
Ditch the resume, and you not only free up valuable recruiter time, you see exactly how applicants match with the demands of the job. Imagine finding out at the screening stage if a candidate is wrong for the job, rather than three months later, after you’ve hired them. Isn’t that worth ditching the resume for?
