Next, Why Are We Still Asking for Resumes?

Even if it's digital, we’re still using a piece of paper that’s hundreds of years old.

There are thousands of resume books , each providing advice for ways to get into the mind of the hirer. My father wrote regularly about resumes in What Color Is Your Parachute ?, and wrote an entire book on rethinking the resume . My brother Mark co-wrote a book on Job-Hunting on the Internet , which included tips on submitting online resumes. Suffice to say the family has given this topic some thought, for the job-hunter.

?But let’s talk about resumes from the perspective of the hirer.

Whether you trace the history of the resume back to Leonardo da Vinci or a 1500’s land surveyor , the process of a candidate writing down their qualifications on a piece of paper has gained an outsized role in the modern hiring process. It’s a default proxy for describing a candidate’s qualifications, often for a generic work role that probably doesn’t match what you’re looking for.

?So if you’re a hirer, why are you still using it?

?What’s a Resume?

?A resume or curriculum vitae (CV) usually has one or more of three attributes:

1. A chronological recounting of what someone has done and accomplished. (For white collar workers, you’d think LinkedIn would be enough… )
2. A mechanism for verification of what someone has done and accomplished. (The hirer can supposedly contact named organizations and schools to verify.)
3. An implicit recounting of the problems someone is best at solving, and the skills used to solve those problems, either with or without related keywords. (But the hirer usually has to “read the tea leaves,” as my father was fond of saying, to guess at what a candidate might be good at in the future.)

What a resume is usually not is:

1. An explicit recounting of the problems someone is best at solving, and the best-loved skills they used to solve those problems.
2. A narrative about the person, in the context of work.

?Why a Resume?

Hirers typically use resumes as a risk reduction process. If you knew with absolute certainty that the next person you meet would be the perfect hire, you wouldn’t bother with resumes. So most hirers ask every candidate to jump through hoops, and the resume is often a non-negotiable hoop.

The other reason that hirers require digitally-submitted resumes is because they’re busy people, and they want to be able to throw software at the problem of sifting through all those applications to find the tiny percentage of candidates they think are worth their time to interview.

That means asking candidates to submit resumes, application forms, and possibly even recorded interviews to a variety of online sites and email repositories. In other words, a robot. In most cases, the robot doesn’t care about the candidate, won’t select the average candidate, and often won’t even respond to a candidate’s submission: Digital ghosting.

It’s an arms race. More job-hunters, more robots, then more job-hunters, and more robots. It’s robots all the way down.

Robots can mostly search for keywords, and make (typically wrong) assumptions about a person’s skills and other personal attributes. They’re usually wrong because they don’t know the candidate: They’re just “guessing” things about the candidate based on what the software guessed about other people it thinks are like that person. The software can figure out what college candidates went to, and it can find well-known employer names and job titles (that’s the verification part). But it can’t accurately figure out what kind of worker someone could be, how hard someone could work, or how creative someone could be.

(After they read this, I know that some startup founders with AI recruiting software will want to challenge me on that contention. Great, let’s have that discussion.)

The robot route might actually work for one or two candidates, if their qualifications make them the “center of the target” for a particular work role. But, statistically, it won’t work for the average job-hunter, especially those who are diverse thinkers with diverse experiences. And that’s why they’re also a failure for hirers.

How Could It Work?

The robot route is often a failure for hirers because the research is quite clear : Psychological diversity and safety are two critical elements for effective teams. Yet using the typical job-description-creation and robo-filtering process will often get the hirer a uniform candidate profile -- even when anti-bias software is used .

There is a better, far more human-centric way. But there are few shortcuts. If you think hiring is the second most important thing you do (after guiding your current team members), then you’ll need to put a significant amount of time into the effort, and start it long before you actually need a candidate. In the same way that the best time to think about your next work role is when you currently have one, the best time to prepare for hiring is before you’re looking.

• ?First, the hirer works with existing team members to define the problems to be solved, and the likely skills needed to solve them, for a work role. The hirer scrubs work role definitions as much as possible to remove bias, and to open up the possibility of involving candidates who are STARs .
• All of the humans involved -- the hirer, the team, people throughout the organization -- use their networks to source candidates. They use networks that specifically provide connections to diverse groups. And workers throughout the hiring organization regularly mentor and coach people from these populations so the hiring organization will have deep knowledge of the diverse candidates’ skillsets.
• People who are interested in doing this kind of work (aka job-hunters) use their own networks to learn about hiring organizations, and to build connections to people in fields of interest. (This is where the system today is especially broken: It’s very difficult to build these connections without great networking opportunities or well-trained people skills.)
• The hirer has created apprenticeship programs, provided training resources to non-profits and community colleges to ensure there’s a pool of trained workers, and holds regular virtual “town hall” sessions so candidates can learn about the organization’s structure and mindset.
• As they engage with candidates, the hirer wants to hear the candidate’s narrative, to better understand the “flex” and “self” skills shown in prior work. That’s a lot more like a story than a resume. In fact, ask candidates to write their (brief, one-page) story, as part of that process. The hirer ignores time gaps, and avoids asking for traditional requirements like a straight-arrow career path. (Remember, diverse thinking and diverse backgrounds.)
• The hirer narrows to a short list of candidates, while always ensuring regular and human communications with candidates who don’t make the short list.
• As often as possible, the hirer breaks up work to be done into short-term (one or two week) projects, asking the short-list candidates to solve specific problems, and compensating them for their time. (It’s at this point that risk-averse hirers will also want to do some verification work, as well.)
• The ultimate choice for hire is part of the process of co-creating the definition of the ultimate work role.

?At no point did we ask for a resume. And yes, it’s a lot of work. But, as we’ve agreed, it’s your second-most important activity, so it’s worth that time.

?What can you do Next?

• If you’re a hirer, work with your Humans Department (formerly known as HR or People), and see how much you can implement of the process outlined above. Make yourself the test case.
• If you’re a job-hunter, use creative job-search techniques as much as you possibly can, working through contacts to reach the person who has the power to hire, and avoid dealing with robots as much as possible.
• If you find you absolutely need a resume (and, given so many hirers are still dependent on the old rules of work, you probably will), check out the suggestions by Liz Mohler, M.S., PCC here.

?gB Gary A. Bolles

I’m the author of The Next Rules of Work: The mindset, skillset, and toolset to lead your organization through uncertainty . I’m also the adjunct Chair for the Future of Work for Singularity Group . I have over 1.1 million learners for my courses on LinkedIn Learning . I'm a partner in the consulting firm Charrette LLC . I’m the co-founder of eParachute.com . I'm an original founder of SoCap , and the former editorial director of 6 tech magazines. Learn more at gbolles.com