If casting directors were recruiters…

… the quality of movies would probably suffer. It’s a harsh statement, but kinda’ true considering the challenges faced by job seekers, submitting reams of resumes to automated hiring platforms.

This thought occurred to me in the middle of the night after watching Johah Hill’s latest flick, You People. The script is terse, the acting admirable, the locations intriguing, and the story flow, a bit contrived, but believable and introspective. What stood out was the performance by Eddie Murphy.

That wasn’t the Eddie Murphy I’d seen before. He was intense, intimidating, and insolent. The humor came from uncomfortable situations not because Murphy was being comedic.

Casting potential, not an exact fit

For the most part, casting departments look for actors who have the versatility, expertise, and fortitude to play a character. They’re looking for potential, not someone who previously had “five years’ experience, playing a stern and principled father, who has a Southern California accent, practices Islam, and has excellent annunciation, problem-solving, and creative skills.”

If casting directors were recruiters, there’s no way Nicole Kidman would have been cast as the homely and moody, writer Virginia Woolf in The Hours. Charlize Theron wouldn’t have been considered to play the trashy, truck-driving serial killer Aileen Wuornos. And when casting a jazz pianist for La La Land, Ryan Gosling would have been passed over because he previously didn’t play the piano.

I recognize that recruiters and human resource (HR) professionals are tasked with shuffling through hundreds of resumes for a single role and pulling out those that “best” match the desired experience, skills, and profile. It’s subjective based on exactitude.

A recruiter seeking a marketing candidate with two years’ experience, working for a SaaS company, would most likely ignore the resume of a jobseeker with twenty-year’s experience, creating communications for technology companies, which has provided them with the knowledge, expertise, ingenuity, and confidence to rapidly get up to speed, and within weeks churn out a collection of engaging go-to-market materials.

The applicant who peppers their resume with the word “storyteller” is the one who gets picked to move forward in the interview process for a job description that requires “good writing skills,” while the person who has a professional website with links to dozens of work samples and articles on blogs and media sites is passed over.

Evolving to change perspectives

Netflix’s most watched English-language TV series of all time is Bridgerton, fundamentally, a period romance. No doubt, the settings, costumes, and storylines reel in the viewers. There’s another dynamic that makes Bridgerton bingeworthy. It’s the color- and character-blind casting. Bridgerton shuffles and rearranges “what was” to “what could have been.” This glorious muddling makes the series addictive, refreshing, and provocative.

The Hollywood of yesteryear is no longer confined to glamourous starlets and dazzling leading men. It’s an amalgamate of actors from every background from acting dynasties to people who bused tables and lived in their cars until they got their “big break.” It’s people who pushed through glass ceilings, confident in their talents and determined to do whatever it took to succeed.

And equally, it’s directors, producers, agents, and casting agents who don’t focus on what the person did the year prior, but what they’re capable of doing, given their unique skills, personality, stage presence, and adaptability.

No doubt, typecasting exists in the movie and theater industries, but there’s a concerted effort to elevate diverse actors who not only deliver memorable performances, but match today’s audiences, interests, and underrepresented voices.

Automating the casting of employees

Yes, there are distinct differences between the role of a casting director and a recruiter or HR professional. The latter are charged with churning through resumes to pick out a handful of contenders. To help, there’s recruiting software with automated evaluation and analytics tools that eliminate repetitive hiring tasks by using AI-assisted screening to speed through online resumes, spewing out those which don’t contain the “right” keywords, and surfacing those that do.

Casting directors, on the other hand, equally sift through piles of headshots and bios, looking for a collection of actors to audition. Often, they meet with producers and directors to discuss the type of actor that would be a good fit, and they’re familiar with the script, so when they meet with the actors – face-to-face or over a video call – they can provide pointers on what the director, playwright or screenwriter is seeking. Their role in selecting the best candidates is pivotal and could turn a mediocre script into a prize-worthy production, whether a film, TV show, commercial, or other performance.

I’m not sure recruiters and HR professionals have the same rigor. The tech industry has a 13.2% attrition rate, the highest of any industry.[1] Employees are whirling through revolving doors because maybe the best and most capable applicants aren’t being hired as they’re the least savvy at creating resumes that bubble to the top.

Over the past six weeks, I’ve applied for nearly 100 positions, many with over 200 applicants within a few hours. Then a few weeks later, the same job is posted again. It’s hard to believe that none of the applicants were qualified. Then again, if the goal of hiring is to pinpoint resumes that exactly meet the job description – at least on paper – it might take several rounds of running resumes through screening tools to find a handful of perfect candidates.

While the movie You People was panned for its approach to addressing racial, cultural, and religious identities, the prospect of seeing Eddie Murphy, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and other prominent actors, resulted in the flick soaring to Netflix’s most-watched list.[2] The disappointing reception hinges on the story and not the acting, which attest to the value of having people and not machine learning find the best fit.

?Photo by Sam McGhee on Unsplash

[1] Employee Attrition Rate, DevSkiller, June 29, 2022

[2] You People with Eddie Murphy just rocketed the No. 1 on Netflix – skip or stream, Rory Mellon, Tom’s Guide, January 30, 2023