An applicant’s résumé used to be everything. Type “resume writing” into the search line at Amazon and 4,468 results appear. Book after book containing hundreds of pages each, instructing the reader as to how he or she should put their best foot forward in a page or two.
Now it turns out some firms don’t even want to look at your resume. Instead of requesting résumés, Union Square Ventures asked applicants to send links representing their “Web presence,” such as a Twitter account or Tumblr blog, instead. Applicants interested in the investment analyst job should also send the company short videos demonstrating their interest in the job, reports the Wall Street Journal’s Rachel Emma Silverman.
A résumé doesn’t provide much depth about a candidate, says Christina Cacioppo, an associate at Union Square Ventures who blogs about the hiring process on the company’s website and was herself hired after she compiled a profile comprising her personal blog, Twitter feed, LinkedIn profile, and links to social-media sites Delicious and Dopplr, which showed places where she had traveled.
Ms. Cacioppo says, “We are most interested in what people are like, what they are like to work with, how they think.”
StickerGiant.com founder John Fischer uses online surveys to screen applicants because résumés can’t determine whether an applicant will be a good social fit.
Companies are being inundated with résumés and many run them through applicant tracking systems that weed out unqualified applicants without the use of human time and judgment. The WSJ’s Lauren Weber explains,
today’s tracking systems are programmed to scan for keywords, former employers, years of experience and schools attended to identify candidates of likely interest. Then, they rank the applicants. Those with low scores generally don’t make it to the next round.
Picking employees that will fit in with a company is critical as government mandates and employment laws have made firing someone expensive and difficult. Also, it’s not cheap to hire people. Weber writes,
the costs of hiring a new employee, which now averages $3,479, according to human-resources consulting firm Bersin & Associates. Big companies, many of which cut their human-resources staffs during the recession, now spend about 7% of their external recruitment budgets on applicant-tracking systems, the firm says.
Even at small companies only 19% of hiring managers review all the resumes and 47% say they review but a few.
Of course one key piece of information included on a résumé is college degree. As firms use technology to screen applicants and select employees, how long will it be before having a degree doesn’t really matter?
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The declining power of a resume has become more and more evident in the past several years, especially in the current economy. Most of the time, a person’s resume is merely one among hundreds an employer will receive, making it virtually impossible for someone to read every single one, let alone distinguish one from another.
A potential employee has to prove through other means they are the most qualified for the job and, most importantly, that they are worth the financial investment necessary to hire them. Many companies have very strict policies when it comes to terminating employment, especially if there is a union involved, which brings additional risk when deciding to hire someone.
At some point, the job market is going to be flooded with so many bachelor’s degrees that companies may not include it as a job qualification and instead demand specific skills, talents, knowledge and/or work experience which may be obtained without having to attend a university.
By then, a master’s degree will probably have become the present-day equivalent of a bachelor’s degree, albeit the education costs still won’t be worth the job benefits. Until significant reform is made to higher education in this country, this trend is going to continue.
The only reason companies request a resume is so that they can collect references and perform background checks. The resume has become a deposition: a legal document of discovery. They exist only to ensure that you’re honest, and if you aren’t they’re a reason to eliminate you.
Relationships matter – at least they matter more in a mature economy.
This isn’t particuarly new. At least 5 years ago I was asked to be on a panel discussion at the local Pick users group. The head of the group asked me to provide a CV, but by the time I got around to it, he told me not to bother as he had done a Google search on my regular e-mail address getting over 20,000 hits (it’s considerably more now), and had everything he needed for their meeting announcement.
In the 46 years since I graduated from Hopkins, I don’t think I have ever provided a résumé after my first job out of University. Every job I’ve had since then I’ve gotten by referrals or been approached to apply by somebody in the company. The last “Real Job” I had resulted from my participation in local computer user groups where I often helped people for free. Participation in user groups and helping people on technical mailing lists has provided many of my clients in the 27 years since I founded my own company.
Degrees mattered?
I would subscribe to what Mr. Curt Doolittle commented a bit earlier and I would add that resumes are often “pumped up” or should I say “pimped up” in order to increase one candidate’s chances ( or so they believe ) ….for the past 9 years I’ve been working in a recruiting agency for the cruise industry ( with a 18 months pause from 2005 to 2006 , working for a concessionaire on a cruise line ) and not only once did I see resumes showing a totally different image of a candidate then the one the candidate presented at the office….
@ what Gil says just above with regards to “if degrees matter ?”
Well , they should , however !
Not always a degree would show the real expertise of one candidate , nor should a degree be enough to have one candidate hired …on that basis alone!
I usually spend hours with one candidate in order to see how well does He or She master foreign languages , hospitality knowledge and personality , trying to find weak spots ( if any ) and show them to the candidates so the outcome resulted will be a completed contract on board a cruise ship .
Not only do I explain My own experiences , I present facts , cases , regulations and standards ( which are different from company to company ) so the candidate is 100% prepared.
The result: We have a very low percentage of people giving up their contract once embarked …
Looking at the resume as reference only and filtering candidates on face to face interviews should be the solution .
I wish everyone to have an excellent day !
Eh, I don’t know. I’m sure that this happens but still on a very tiny scale. Based off of my own observation in the past couple of years, most companies still require a resume when applying and that is even for part time work.
the article is incomplete.
it essentially claims resumes are not an efficient tool for recruitment.
then it says companies are turning their eyes to candidates’ social profiles and behavior on the internet.
how’s that *actually* working for companies? have retention rates increased? are hired workers really more productive?
this the article doesn’t say.
As the CEO of multiple companies with full time recruiting organizations, I can tell you that in my experience, the primary recruiting tools that recruiters rely upon are Linked-In, Facebook, and Google. The hard truth is that only 10% of any staff is talented enough to be marginally competitive. Those people, at least in law, technology, and marketing (which are the fields that I have experience in) have their own social media activities, they have their own web sites, and they have their own ‘brand’. The hiring strategy that most top firms rely upon is to hire top talent, then to recruit the friends and followers of that top talent for the ‘other 80%’, of jobs.
People are a portfolio, and good execs manage them that way. Very large institutions tend to make ‘safe’ hires. They hire people who are NOT terribly talented, but are predictable workhorses. So if you’re a radical, it’s better to seek the entrepreneurial companies.
Requiring degrees cuts the number of applications the employer must read. If an employer can hire a person with a 4 year degree for the same wage as a high school graduate he should at least get an employee who can read, write, and do simple arithmetic.
The essay is probably correct for the low end job market, say hiring dozens of holiday sales people. As Mr. Doolittle notes, most “good” jobs go the someone who knows someone. I suspect many good government job postings are pro forma.
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