Resume Review Challenges - How Good Candidates are often missed -- so what can we do about that ?!?!?

In considering the many challenges that both Employers and Candidates face in finding each other in the Job Market, I was struck by a single thought - "floundering"... and it applies to both sides of that equation.

The definition of "floundering" varies a little if you look it up on the web, but the heart of it is -- to struggle to move -- or -- to proceed clumsily.

No one really wants this situation, but until something changes with the hiring processes used in Corporate America, it's likely to continue.

I had recently read a post by someone who works in an internal Talent Acquisition role who was apologizing to the Candidate Community for all the many issues Candidates are experiencing these days when applying to Job Postings and said that we (employers) really need to do better...

I liked their honesty and the sentiment expressed and thought to myself -- self, why is it so hard for a good Candidate to get selected for even just an initial phone interview, when they do have the skills and experience for the role, and it's a role the Employer really does need to have filled ?

Since the work is there, the budget to pay for this position has been justified and approved, a Job Posting has gone out, and Candidates are applying to it... Why aren't good Candidates at least having 1st round phone interviews for it ?

Good companies don't post job openings willy-nilly, either a role that was already budgeted for has been vacated, or someone went through the often lengthy internal process of justifying and gaining approval for a new position. In either case, the need is certainly there.

So -- if an Employer is ready to hire and has work that needs doing -- and Candidates have skills/experience and are ready to go to work -- several relevant questions come to mind:

• why are both sides still Ghosting each other at various stages of the interview cycle ?
• why are Applicants saying they never hear anything at all after submitting their background to a Job Posting ?
• why are Candidates saying they have not received any useful feedback after they have had an Interview ?
• why are Hiring Managers complaining they're not seeing Resumes for the right type of Candidate from their Talent Acquisition team ?
• why are Candidates saying they just keep getting the "thanks but no thanks" auto-reply without ever actually talking to an Employer ?
• why are Talent Acquisition Recruiters saying they just don't receive good Resumes of qualified Applicants from their Job Postings ?

Inquiring minds really do want to know why...

There's a lot to figure out and unpack in those questions. The truth is, depending on an Employers' culture, the resources they've put behind their Talent Acquisition efforts, the systems and processes used to attract and then evaluate Applicants, and just plain old Human Nature in general, there may be no simple answers ... or are there ?

To illustrate this from a real-world example, I recently had a long time Candidate reach out to me (someone I have helped find positions before) and they asked me for some advice on a role they saw posted that they felt was a really strong match to their current skills and abilities. This person is gainfully employed, but is now motivated to make a change for the right Company and Position. This is the ideal type of Candidate (in the Passive Candidate Channel) for an Employer to consider since their Resume is not plastered all over the Web. In such a case, both sides have a little more breathing room to take some time to figure out if there is a good match for both of them. So I shared some of my history with this Employer and offered some ideas on how to best approach them. Ultimately, this Candidate decided they would just apply to the position through conventional channels (not exactly what I recommended, but this is the route they chose to take), ie. they applied online, uploaded their resume, filled in all the forms, then they waited to hear something from an internal Recruiter... then they waited to hear something from an internal Recruiter... then they waited some more to hear from an internal Recruiter...

When they did finally hear back from this Employer, it was weeks after they applied and it was in the form of a rejection email that said words to the effect -- "...at this time we have decided to pursue other candidates for this position, good luck in your job search..."

The Applicant received this insightful news (yes, that is actually a little sarcasm being used there) without ever being contacted by an internal Recruiter to discuss their background as it relates to the posted position.

It's too bad really, since this particular Candidate does have a really strong background for the role that was posted, so while this Candidate hasn't worked in their particular industry, they have managed (quite successfully) the exact same functions that this particular Employer is now looking to have led by the person who will eventually take this role.

This person is what I would consider a top caliber Candidate, so someone in Talent Acquisition really missed the boat with this one. Not only did they let a good, local, viable Candidate slip right through their fingers, but this Candidate is now less than impressed with this Employer and most likely won't consider them in the future. So someone might say "nice work there", if they really wanted to be somewhat sarcastic about these circumstances.

It's funny (not really) how an Applicant/Candidate can actually become offended by how someone in Talent Acquisition has behaved towards them, which includes ignoring them, and it's likely that when this Employer's name comes up in future conversations, this particular individual will not have much to say that is positive about them based on how they feel they were treated. Their experience as a qualified Applicant was definitely less than stellar in this case.

It's one thing to be told you do not have the right credentials, or skills, or experience level for a given role. It's quite another to know you do have the right background for a posted position and to then just receive a thanks-but-no-thanks note without ever having someone in Talent Acquisition actually talk with you to truly determine your viability to fill the open position. After all, you were invited to apply, you took the time and made the effort to do so, and then you waited for the call you were sure would come based on your background, and then you're sent an email (weeks later) that basically says -- we have better candidates to consider... (all I can say is "ouch", for both parties here)

What makes this situation even more sad, really, is that it's very likely that no one in this Employer's Talent Acquisition group is even really conscious of what has just transpired here and chances are very good that this is most likely going on all the time with other good Candidates that have applied to other open positions at this firm. (let's think about that for a moment)

Seems to me, that if you were managing this group, you might want to know how many times good Candidates are actually treated this way, but... you can't really fix what you don't actually measure... (Ignorance is bliss ?!? In this case, I would think not)

So, I'm thinking some process improvement is probably needed here.

I've done Agency Staffing for a long time and so I do have a fair amount of Employment experience in that Industry (lots of school of hard knocks and trial & error experience, I might add). Couple that with also having a Business focused background in Software Development, an unusual combination I know, and I do like to think that my analysis, process improvement, and problem solving skills might just give me the experience and credibility to have just a few insights and ideas that might help here.

In my Software Development days I was routinely asked to solve many difficult problems that others had given up on. I think my Boss actually took some sort of twisted pleasure in continually trying to stump me, but then did seem to really enjoy the fact that I routinely solved problems that others couldn't.

So this is where I originally learned you need to fully understand a system (not necessarily the hardware/software part, but primarily the people/process part) in order to then be best prepared to design and implement a new system (which may or may not include the hardware/software part) to improve accuracy and efficiencies.

Sometimes, all that was needed was a new work flow, or a revised set of physical procedures, or perhaps just new forms, and certainly when appropriate new software was also built, but only after you fixed any of the other problems you found in the system first. (This goes back to the old saying -- a manual mess just becomes an automated nightmare -- ie. automation for automation's sake just increases how quickly you can exacerbate a problem)

So if we go back and look at the issues listed above with all the "why" questions, what you may start to see when we look at those issues like a system, is that the challenges related to missing a good Candidate seem to center around several problematic areas of Talent Acquisition.

What are those, you might ask ? If you've made it this far into this Article then I'm glad you'd like to know, so here are just a few items I think we should ponder -

• The Job Posting may not accurately or realistically portray what is really needed for the open position. (can be too little detail, or requirements that are too many in number, can be the wrong details getting posted for a position, or the posting is just too broad in all the skills the posting is trying to cover)
• A Candidates' Resume may not thoroughly or realistically portray their skills and experiences ... as they would relate to an open position. (too much fluff and not enough stuff is listed or the Resume is constructed to try to appeal to the broadest number of roles this Candidate could fill and fails to zero in on the specific role they're applying to)
• There are not enough properly trained Talent Acquisition staff on hand to properly vet all the applications coming in, so we see Job Postings getting overwhelmed with Applicants.
• Too many unqualified Candidates are applying to positions where they do not have the skills and experience required. (they may be just be trying to get someone, anyone, to at least review their background with the wild hope that an employer will figure out where they need this Applicant's background, this then makes it even more labor intensive for Talent Acquisition staff to find the right Candidate, which just increases the odds that a good Candidate will be missed)
• The Job Posting was put out on the web for everyone to see, but was not really posted to actually entice Candidates to apply. (insert record scratching sound here, slight pause to ponder, this is done intentionally by Employers and I don't really endorse this practice, but hang with me, I will explain this one later on)

There, with just these few reasons to start with, we now can see why Employers complain they can't find the right Candidate and why Candidates complain that Employers are overlooking them when they apply... I'm not sure I really feel any better about this situation now that I've stated all of this...

(insert a pause for my taking a deep breath and letting out a long sigh)

In my Software Development days, poor requirements gathering and poor documentation usually meant that software would be created and then routinely rejected by the Users. What was created, wasn't actually what they were truly looking for. So I do see a pretty strong parallel here if we have either (or worse, both) a weak job posting and/or a weak resume as the primary documents we're using to try to initially match a person to a position.

This lead me to thinking about several cliché statements/quotes we've all heard before --

• Never judge a book by it's cover
• What's inside is what counts
• Outward appearances can be deceiving
• Actions, not words, define who a person (or employer) really is
• A potato may look like a dirty stone, but by cutting it and frying it, this will get you - French Fries (sorry, couldn't resist that last one, it came up during some Googling)

All joking aside, they can ALL be applied equally to -- Employers, Job Postings, Job Descriptions, Recruiters, Hiring Managers, Applicants/Candidates, and Resumes.

The hiring cycle from Job Posting to Candidate Hire has so many opportunities for failure that it's amazing anyone gets hired at all, really. Which I suspect is why the majority of Candidates getting hired often come from internal referrals, ie. someone at an Employer knows someone they've worked with before and can vouch for them.

This cuts out a lot of process steps and reduces the perceived risk that would normally be involved when trying to fully evaluate someone who is brand spanking new to the Employer. This is also why everyone is recommending that Candidates seek out contacts at an Employer that can advocate for them, instead of just applying to a Job Posting. My friends in Talent Acquisition will routinely tell you they don't want Candidates going around them, but since the traditional way of applying doesn't appear to be working very well, this is why everyone is looking for other ways to actually get connected to an Employer.

So, for the sake of this Article, if we exclude situations when a Candidate Referral fills an open position, then what we have listed below are just a few of the many things that can make it harder to get the right person to the right job going through traditional hiring channels / processes -

• The Job Posting is weak or poorly written, hence many unqualified Candidates end up applying to it. I've seen dozens and dozens of these postings during the current pandemic, some are so bad you wonder why they were posted at all. So you can end up with a Candidate Pool of people who can't do and wouldn't want the actual open position once you finally get to the heart of what is really needed.
• The Resumes submitted to the Employer are weak, failing to fully describe all the skills and abilities and experiences that the Candidate can bring to the table and the best Candidate can easily get overlooked or rejected. There is a lot of questionable advice floating around the web on what you really need to include in your Resume and Candidates are easily confused or led astray by this. No Candidate is actually an expert at writing a Resume, since it is done so infrequently in someone's career.
• Job Titles utilized by Employers and hence listed in a Candidates' own Resume can vary so much for the exact same job duties, that it is easy for an Employer to miss a Candidate who has been doing the work needed for a current open position. Basically, Titles in the Resume can make it appear that a Candidate has not held this role before, even when they have. From the Job Posting side of things, Candidates may not apply to a posting because the Title of the position in the Posting doesn't really seem to reflect (from their perspective) the work they've done in the past.
• Initial Phone interviews, if they happen (usually a big "if" these days), lack so much of the non-verbal feedback necessary to properly evaluate a potential match, it's easy for incorrect impressions to be formed, by both sides. One communication expert (from my Agency days) advised us to avoid phone interviews, wherever possible, because phone interviews only allow us to utilize about 20% of our interpersonal communication toolset. That means phone interviews can give us up to an 80% opportunity for miscommunication, ie. wrong impressions. Ultimately, we could say phone interviews give us an 80% opportunity for failure...
• In-person Interviewing itself is not a very natural inter-personal process, where both sides can easily end up failing to present reality to the other, even when sitting in the same room together. Both Candidates and Hiring Managers have told me -- the Job or the New Hire -- was not what they really thought they were getting from the interviews, once the person hired in. They would typically tell me this when they then sought out my services to rectify that situation, and I've seen this on both sides of the table. It is really a two-way perception problem, Hiring Managers getting surprised and/or Candidates getting surprised once they actually start working together. (the old Demo versus Reality joke comes to mind here, where the demo was very exciting, over the top really, but the actual product not so much once you bought it...)
• Perception is Reality. At all stages of the hiring cycle, what you perceive to be true, is the truth to you (please stop and think about that for just a moment before moving on). So, the risk is that your perception (Hiring Manager or Candidate) is not accurate, ie. you have a wrong impression (whether a good one or a bad one) but you believe that impression to be factual. Without the right checks & balances to prevent and/or correct misperceptions when they occur, this can then lead to making a wrong decision. How many times has anyone in Talent Acquisition actually done a post-interview debrief with both the Candidate and the Hiring Manager right after the interviews ? (Not very often, if ever, if everyone is really being truthful) This would be where misperceptions could be caught and clarified before moving someone along in the interview cycle or removing them from the interview process. The potential risk for misperceptions truly does apply to both sides of the hiring process, this is not just a Candidate problem and it is not just a Hiring Manager problem.

I'll stop here with the list since what we'll focus on for the rest of this Article is how good Candidates are missed during Resume Review after applying to a job posting. My thought is this, if we can't fix this first part of the System, we'll never get to the phone interview or the in-person part of the interviewing cycle anyways...

Going back to the first 4 on-topic quotes/cliches I started with.

• Never judge a book by it's cover
• What's inside is what counts
• Outward appearances can be deceiving
• Actions, not words, define who a person (employer) really is

If we relate these quotes/cliches to reviewing Resumes as applications come in, below are some insights to consider from both the Employer and Candidate perspective related to this.

Challenges from the Employer perspective -

• This Resume doesn't contain any Job Titles that seem to match the Title of the open position. (therefore, this Candidate must not have done this role or work before, right ? Maybe yes, maybe no...)
• The Resume doesn't contain any examples of work (job highlights) that would relate to the Job Duties for the position. (they may have done this work, but didn't write any of it down or explain it in a way that relates it -- to the Employers' open position)
• The Resume doesn't really describe the environments the Candidate has worked in, so we can't really determine how close those environments might be to our own environment. (the closer past work environments are to our own, the quicker this Candidate will come up to speed in our environment, and the less likely they would be to leave us -- risk abatement anyone ?)
• The Talent Acquisition person trying to fill the position most likely has not done firsthand the work needed for this position. So they have no real personal frame of reference to the position. As such, to evaluate a Resume they've received they have to rely primarily on the Job Description and potentially a conversation with the Hiring Manager to discuss their expectations. So the challenge is -- do they truly know who they're looking for to fill this position, can they really know ? (let's pause and just think about that a little bit... wait, don't move on just yet, this one is important)

So, we have someone who is reviewing Resumes and trying to match up what a Candidate has done with regards to the requirements of the open position, and this person typically will only have conceptual knowledge of the role... This is not really an "ah-hah" moment, it's just explaining one aspect of what we need to unpack here.

This also isn't a slam on internal Corporate Recruiters, it's just an acknowledgement that they typically have not done the work personally that is involved in the open position that they're trying to fill. A Hiring Manager probably came up through the ranks and did do some of this work at one point in their career, but they aren't typically the first person to see the resume. Since your perspective is built upon your experiences, no (zero) experience with something is going to equate to a pretty limited perspective on that topic. You can argue against this as much as you'd like, but I would suggest you just put your bruised ego in check here, because there is really no way to overcome the truth of this...

To further complicate this, we have a Resume being reviewed that may use terminology, buzz words, and phrases that in reality are equivalent to what an Employer is looking for, but they may not match exactly the same items being used at this Employer. The Hiring Manager would typically know what is equivalent, but the Talent Acquisition person, again, really has no personal frame of reference to do that. (It's the situation of - I don't know what I don't know)

This would be akin to my Wife asking me to pick up groceries and on the list are multiple items she needs for a new Recipe she wants to try. She is an excellent cook, and admittedly I am not, so she knows exactly what these items are and how they will influence how the meal will turn out. Since I don't cook, I try hard to be very literal in what I pick up for her. Even with the help of Google, I still end up guessing (a lot) when it comes to substitutions that should still be acceptable, or I just end up going back to her (repeatedly) via text in an effort to be successful, while trying hard not to drive her crazy. Let's just say, as the person who is doing the shopping, it can be somewhat stressful when the store doesn't have their products labelled exactly the same way as what is written on the list.

So, a Candidate who is perfectly qualified for the role ends up not being contacted because of terminology -- in their Job Titles, in their Job Highlights, in the Processes or Tools they've utilized, even when those same items are completely in line with the experience needed for the open position.

In an earlier Article I talked about Comparison Equivalency which can be a significant challenge for a Talent Acquisition staff member, it's not intended as a criticism as much as just explaining once again how good Candidates do get missed.

In case you're curious, Comparison Equivalency - is the intelligence/experience to know that a certain category of skill or tool or process or software is?equivalent?to something similar being utilized at a new employer, when said item is not from the same vendor or same training/credentialing authority, even though those skills/experiences are?truly equivalent?and?easily transferable?to the new Employer's environment.

Challenges from the Candidate side of things.

• The Job Description is far too general to really know what they should focus on in their Resume or cover letter. The Title isn't exactly the same as what they've held before, but the job duties appear to be. So how do you cross-reference what you've done in the past to best highlight/explain those experiences that you do feel directly relate to the current job posting ?
• The Job Duties/Requirements read like a Super Hero recruiting poster. Lots of powerful action words describing the approach to various work tasks, without fully explaining exactly what those task are really supposed to be. Also, the list of Job Duties / Requirements may appear to contain 3 jobs in one. So it's very confusing as to who an Employer is really trying to hire for that particular role. I'm pretty sure Wonder Woman, Batman, and Captain America are currently not available, let alone the fact they're actually fictional characters to begin with...
• The Job Description mentions adherence to and support of Company policies and procedures, upholding the values of the firm, conducting yourself in a manner most befitting to the reputation of the Employer, etc. which are certainly all lofty goals for a new hire, but actually impossible to know ahead of time unless you already work for that Employer and have access to what defines those. They are also items that don't typically show up in a Resume, ever...
• The Job Description doesn't really tell Candidates much about the Employer -- their size, their culture, their markets, their reputation, etc. So, just how much time do they expect a Candidate to use to figure all that stuff out ? Is it the same amount of time the Talent Acquisition team spends reviewing the Candidate's resume... (not really trying to be too snarky here, but I am trying to make a valid point here)
• Also, if a Candidate takes too long to figure out if an Employer is the right place for them, when they do actually apply the assigned Recruiter may consider them late to the party and have already made their choices for initial interviews. (Can you say Catch-22 ? ie. I take the time to figure out if an Employer is the right place for me, but then miss the window of opportunity to have my background actually reviewed once I do apply, so in essence we reward the person who applied quickly but may not have fully researched if my firm is really the place for them...)
• Candidates usually haven't considered that someone in Talent Acquisition, someone who has never done the work they're applying for, is actually the first person to see their Resume. While a Hiring Manager may know exactly what a Candidate has done, this typically isn't the first person to review their Resume. So if a Candidate knew that ahead of time, they could make an effort to write/update/annotate their Resume or Cover Letter in a way that also helps someone in Talent Acquisition connect the dots.

So, I'm thinking of an old movie quote related to this -- "...what we have here, is a failure to communicate..." (has to be said with a noticeable Southern accent, by the way)

Two primary problems seem to jump right out here --

• The Talent Acquisition person may not have enough knowledge of the role to adequately compare a Candidate's experiences to the Requirements of the open position. Those requirements, if they don't include direct Hiring Manager input, are also suspect in terms of their current relevance to the actual job.
• Candidates may not have not created a Resume that speaks broadly enough to the open position so that someone who hasn't done the job personally would still know they are a potential match for it, while also providing all the details that a Hiring Manager (and potentially peers) will need to see to have continued interest in their background.

So the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question is -- how do we fix this, or how do we reduce significantly the opportunity for failure here ?

I offer the details below, which come from several decades of successful work in the Staffing Agency industry, to provide some suggestions for process improvements (on both sides of the table) -

Suggestions for Employers -

• Stop posting generic Job Descriptions when you're hiring. You're making more work for yourself when you do. If the Job Posting does not list specific skills, technologies, processes, and other requirements, it shouldn't go out to the Web or you'll have to live with dozens of unqualified, or under-qualified Candidates applying to it.
• I would recommend that you not post anything unless and until you have information you can put into the posting that was taken directly from talking with the Hiring Manager. Something to consider is that posting a Job Description by itself without this input just makes it easier for your competition to hire the best people (maybe some of your own people) when they do put in details from their Hiring Managers in their job postings. This is not only related to having proper background details about a position that you're working to fill, it's key to actually winning in a competitive Marketplace. The longer it takes you to fill an open position due to lack of proper detail, the more time your competition has to move ahead of you in your respective market segment.
• Just a suggestion here, but I'd propose you have your Talent Acquisition person sit down with your Hiring Manager to really learn about the role -- what it can be called outside of your own environment (many times the Hiring Manager does know what else it can be called other than the particular Job Title used in your Job Description), what are the minimal (ideally 3) required skills needed in a Resume to make a Candidate viable for the role, what are the minimal (ideally 3-5) nice-to-have skills/experiences in a Resume that would make a qualified Candidate stand out. This one is really crucial in my opinion. So, if you can't really pin down those requirements, you most likely don't truly know just who you're looking for and you're just making more work for yourself and for your Hiring Manager to eventually get a position filled.

Relevant Bunny Trail here - Real world Case-in-Point - I had a Client in my Agency days who had gotten into the habit of interviewing 6+ Candidates per open position, which meant they would need to review up to a dozen or more Resumes just to get to those 6+ Candidates. The details they provided for each role was from internal Job Descriptions only, no Hiring Manager input was provided up front. We should also note, these positions were for consulting/staff augmentation roles, not permanent hire roles. (you can stop shaking your head now, real life can truly be stranger than fiction, and yes, this was excessive when hiring a contractor). The scheduling and related disruption of work for each Hiring Manager in order to get through all these interviews could take weeks... Good Candidates would go off the market before a decision could be made reducing the Candidate Pool rapidly over time. This was exhausting for everyone involved. I eventually sold the idea to their Talent Acquisition Leadership that if they would just trust me and let me have a 15 minute meeting with each Hiring Manager as each Consulting Requirement came out, just to have the Hiring Manager explain -- what the project was that they were working on, to explain where this resource fit into that project, and to then discuss some very focused required skills and nice-to-have skills -- The business benefit of this would allow me to get our submittal-to-interview-to-hire ratio from 12 to 6 to 1 down to just 2 to 2 to 1, and there should be no reason to have anyone waste additional time and energy interviewing any more Candidates than this for a contracting role. The meetings would all be organized and hosted by my HR contact and I was tasked to keep the meetings to just 15 minutes each. Within 1 month of kicking this off we were able to show -- a marked improvement in time-to-hire, a solid reduction in good candidates going off the market before a decision could be made, and a significant reduction in the amount of time & energy the Hiring Manager was providing to get a Contractor selected. It worked so well, the Client then asked us if we would also implement this process for them on positions that involved not only our firm, but all of our Competitors as well. The project we deployed this on was an exclusive project to my firm, so we did have to politely decline implementing our processes in a manner that would then give our competition a boost. That said, they decided to mimic as much of the process as they could on their own and did have some noticeable success with it.

(Now back to the task at hand - suggestions for Employers)

• Identify upfront what are equivalent tools, processes, certifications and/or experiences that would still make a Candidate viable for the role, even if they aren't specified the exact same way in the Resume as they are listed in the Job Description. This assumes you do have required tools, processes, certification and/or experience that are needed for the role listed in the Job Description in the first place. Hiring Managers often times know these and can help guide a Talent Acquisition person in learning what these equivalent items are. A simple truth here is -- you can't know, if you don't ask.
• Do not post positions that you are not going to interview external Candidates for. Please modify your policies and/or procedures to remove posting a position externally when you already know who is going to fill an open position. You may now take that surprised / shocked look off our face if you're doing this today, and please just stop doing it. If you are going to continue doing this, then at the very least set expectations properly by stating in your posting that external Candidates will only be contacted if someone is not hired from the current slate of internal Applicants who are already being considered for this role.
• Employers, please do not let your ATS system make initial phone interview decisions for you. I've seen several Job Application processes where pre-screening questions are being asked and then an immediate rejection is being applied. I'm sorry, but there really is no pre-screening questionnaire you can construct that will accurately filter qualified Candidates for you and not risk missing good Candidates. People and their work experiences are just far too complex for that. I've seen several where the questions are so literal and so poorly worded that a Candidate should answer them incorrectly in order to be able to better explain to a Talent Acquisition person how their background is actually on target for the role posted, even though the questions asked would imply they are not. Also, please limit your online application process, expecting a Candidate to spend 10-15-20 minutes just to apply to your posting is grossly disrespectful to the individual. Get the basic information you need quickly and when a Candidate appears to be a potential match, then ask them to provide some of the additional detail.
• Employers, please consider that often times the best Candidates may actually have the weakest Resumes. (sounds counter-intuitive, I know, but it is often true). The reason for this is pretty simple, many of the best Candidates at the staff level have followed someone in Leadership that they've supported, when that Leader has made a job change. Since they were already a known commodity by the Leader, they didn't need a strong resume to get an offer from the new Employer because their old boss has vouched for them.?So if those Candidates no longer have the benefit of that relationship and are now trying to utilize that same weak resume, they will be easily missed, even though they have very solid skills. Along with that, if someone has a significant amount of time in industry (meaning they were actually paid to perform a job function for a significant period of time) and yet appear to have a weak resume, it's likely you should still talk with that Candidate to determine (as only a human being can) if their experience is just under-represented in their Resume.
• Employers, do not allow decisions to be made about talking to a Candidate from information found on Social Media or Business Networking sites. It's well known that on these sites people can present an "image" of them-self that is not necessarily an accurate depiction of who they really are. On those sites, it can just be a situation where Candidates are presenting an image of who they would really like to be, or to just prank their family and friends. They are usually not lying, it's just the nature of those sites that make a good Candidate want to present things in either a humorous light or in a way that makes them look their very best. I had an Uncle who was the consummate family prankster and his FB page was routinely updated just to be over the top funny, never literal. As for trying to make yourself appear your best in Social Media, that's a lot like dressing up to go to a Wedding Reception, when typically your appearance is far more causal than formal most of the time. The only exception I would suggest having for this, and hopefully this is an exception, is when someone is posting things that are of a divisive or hateful nature, in that case, run do not walk, to the nearest exit...

On that last bullet point regarding Social Media and Business Networking sites - another real world example here -- I had a Client once tell me that they felt one of my Consultants may have falsified his Resume. When I asked them how they came to that suspicion, they said that one of their Talent Acquisition staff had recently heard about comparing backgrounds on Business Networking sites to Resumes that were submitted and when they don't line up, you probably have Resume Fraud going on. That's somewhat logical on the surface, but completely flawed for the purpose given, but I do believe they thought they had discovered an untapped resource for this.

Many people join Business Networking sites and enter their work history from memory, not necessarily with their Resume sitting in front of them, so the information put in (since it is not actually a credential) can be prone to many errors or omissions. A lot of times, those sites are just not as up to date (or as accurate) as someone's Resume.

This situation came up during some sort of Audit they had just started doing even though my Consultant had been doing the job flawlessly for well over a year and his Hiring Manager routinely praised his performance and abilities.

Performing this process prior to hiring someone might have made some sense, but doing it after the fact on Consultants who had a proven track record of good performance, seemed to me to be a complete waste of time and energy. It might have also made some sense if you had Consultants that were under-performing, but still made no sense for someone doing a really good job.

When we asked our Consultant why his Resume didn't line up to the Business Networking site in question, he said he was just in hurry when he joined it (years back) and he really only joined it to gain access to their User Groups where he wanted to ask some Technical Questions. He then pointed out that his Resume -- is -- where he keeps all of his actual work details (go figure)...

Suggestions for Candidates -

• Stop applying to positions your background is in no way qualified for. This is NOT a good strategy to get someone/anyone to review your Resume with the hope they will then go find the perfect role for you at their Employer. If there is a way to do a general application when a position for your background is not currently open, do that instead, join the Employer's Candidate Community to be notified when something you're qualified for does open up, but don't apply to a position you're not qualified for. You're just making it harder for someone else who is qualified to get noticed. (so lets try to use the Golden Rule here)
• Read the full Job Description, if it is one that demonstrates a reasonable amount of information about the position, then highlight in your Resume where you've done that work before, do this to show specifically where something you've done (while potentially called something else) is actually equivalent to what the employer is looking for. It's OK to put something in (parentheses) next to a job highlight to point this out. Do not expect that a potential Employer is going to "know" where you have equivalent skills or abilities. (it's your job to point them out purposefully in your Resume to highlight the match)
• Make sure your Resume includes environmental details about each place you've worked - especially when you've worked in environments that are similar to the potential new Employer. A Candidate bringing with them an understanding of an industry, or a technology, or a process, or the scope/size of an organization -- ie. Global vs National vs Regional vs Local, these are all details that help a Talent Acquisition person see the match.
• Add a section to your resume, call it "Keywords for ATS" or something similar and then list every buzzword, product, process, tool, procedure, activity you can think of (that you do actually have experience with) that would relate to the open position. The Job Description may give you some hints about these keywords or acronyms that someone will be using to filter the applications as they come in. If the ATS system doesn't actually filter on these, chances are still pretty good that a Recruiter will start their review of your resume by first searching for and highlighting keywords and phrases in your Resume that match the open position. The more highlighting your Resume ends up with, the higher the likelihood you'll get contacted.
• Network with your Contacts to see if you can find someone who knows someone at the Employer, in the area you want to apply to. If you can Network with someone who is in the department where the open position exists and then have that person reach out to the Talent Acquisition team to ask them to review your application, your odds will go up in getting your Resume reviewed and potentially getting an interview scheduled. This is assuming that after talking to that inside contact you do actually have the skills needed for the open role. While this is not ideal, it seems this is still necessary to increase your odds of being contacted.

So, we can see there are lots of challenges (for both sides) in finding the right match on paper, let alone when someone goes through the full interviewing cycle. Good Candidates get missed every single day, and it's typically not through any intentional actions by either side. (conspiracy theorists can relax on this one, no Employer really wants to miss meeting a good Candidate for a position they need filled and no Candidate wants to take the time to apply to a posting just to be ignored or passed over)

None the less, when good people do get missed, positions stay open far too long, Talent Acquisition staff get worn out looking, Hiring Managers get frustrated waiting, and good Candidates lose interest in that particular Employer.

The good news here, is that there are very reasonable things we can all do to improve the process for everyone's benefit.

These efforts will require some forethought, and yes, some actual legwork on both sides, but I'm pretty sure that any worthy endeavor usually does start out with some good analysis / discovery, some good documentation, some reasonable planning, and then some rock solid follow through, if we really expect some good results to come from it at the end of the day.

So let's try, just try, to make this situation a little more qualitative (accurate) and a little less quantitative (volume) for everyone involved. Otherwise, please feel free to keep "Floundering" all you want...

As for me, I always strive to work smarter not harder, and I generally look to partner with Business Contacts that want to do that too. Those contacts always get my best effort, especially after I've explained the method to my madness and the benefits that come from investing just a little time and energy to gather those details/requirements upfront.

Three final thoughts here if your current processes aren't really working well but you just don't really want to implement any changes...

• To hit the target you do have to aim for the Bullseye, not having (or providing) good information upfront is like aiming with your eyes closed, if you think about it...
• One of the definitions of insanity is doing the same thing exactly the same way over and over again, but expecting different results to be generated each time.
• The suggestions offered will actually reduce effort, time, and cost for hiring if you will just commit to pursuing excellence in your hiring practices.