Back in 1482, a young man heard that the region of Milan was looking for an engineer, so he did what job applicants do. He wrote down his skills and his objectives and how they related to the role in what is thought to be the first resume ever created. That young man was Leonardo da Vinci.
You see, Da Vinci, in his resume, never put anything down about his past achievements. For context, Da Vinci was one of the most talented people to ever walk on the face of the planet, right? He was the father of architecture and palaeontology, an expert botanist, astronomer and cartographer. The guy that painted the Mona Lisa. Yet if you took a look at his resume, you would never guess that he was capable of achieving any of those things.
If resumes failed to capture the genius and the potential of someone like Da Vinci, why do we think that it'll work for you and me? Why will they work for anyone? Centuries later, why do resumes play such an important part in recruiting and our careers despite little to no evidence that they actually work? In fact, since the 1950s, they've become a mainstay in the job application process. And although we have since put a man on the moon, cracked the human genome, created a metaverse and somehow kept up with all of the Kardashians, the biggest --
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the biggest innovation when it comes to resumes has been converting it from paper to PDF. Why are we not questioning this?
Where we have seen innovation is with applicant tracking systems, bots, AI that scan thousands and thousands of resumes looking for keywords that match the job description. These bots are used by nearly all Fortune 500 companies, so although most of the time you're preparing your resume for it to be reviewed by another human being, they often get rejected by AI before it even reaches a person. If this is all news to you and you're looking for a job, then you’re playing the job search game, and you don’t know the rules. Hardly anyone does. And the problem there is that AI still has a long way to go, and machine learning is nowhere near to making predictions on candidates’ success.
I've been working in HR now for more than a decade. During this time, I've reviewed thousands of resumes and made many countless hiring decisions. Which, by default, makes me the resume doctor for everyone that knows me. You see, whenever a friend, a friend's friend, their husband, their wives, their kids, their friends are looking for a job, I'm the first person they call when they need help with their resume. Irrespective of where they are in their careers, there's all this insecurity and anxiety when it comes to their resume.
Why do people get so nervous about something so silly as updating a resume? We've all been there, up late at night, trying to apply for that dream role, obsessing over each bullet point and detail. As if, if we spend 20 more minutes on the resume, it'll somehow be perfect. It will become the ideal resume. As if the ideal resume exists. It doesn't, it's very subjective. And because of that, there's so much conflicting information. Depending on who you ask, resume should only be one page long. Others say two pages long. Others suggests a summary or objectives. Others say try and make it visually pleasing. You can't have too much white space, but if you have too much text, it just looks too busy. And then there's all these articles online that deep dive into the minutia all the way to the absurd when it comes to resumes, arguing about things like font psychology and how using a sexy font like Arial or Calibri --
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will better serve you in your job search versus a boring one like Times New Roman.
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Who would have thought that that would have any correlation with how good you could do the job? And the absurdity continues. Hobbies and interests. Do you include them, or do you leave them out? If you leave them out, does it make your resume look too impersonal? If you leave them in, what if your hobbies are weird?
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What if you enjoy dressing up like Pokemon characters or collecting Beanie Babies? Will that cost you a job?
During the entire time, as you're spiraling down this rabbit hole, you're not questioning the tool or the process itself. You're questioning yourself. Is it me? Am I the problem? The answer is no. Resumes are a terrible metric for assessing who you are at work, and the world of work is constantly evolving. There was a time, 10 years into your career, you had two to three jobs at most. Now it's common for people to change jobs once every year and have multiple side hustles, too. Those student loans are not going to pay for themselves, right?
A resume doesn't do you justice if you have a non-traditional path. And a non-traditional path is now the norm. Although corporate America has made a ton of progress in the way of equity and inclusion, relying on resumes is a magnet for discriminatory practices and unconscious bias. More specifically, when Black and Asian candidates whiten their names, they're more successful in their job search. The same applies to when women change their name to a man's. But men were not immune to this either, and we often get rejected for roles in female-dominated fields.
The pressure to fit your experience on one piece of paper for experienced candidates can be too much. And studies have shown that candidates as young as their 30s face ageism with resume sourcing. So you can imagine what the experience is like for someone coming out of retirement. Don't believe me? Try applying for an entry-level role with an AOL.com email account.
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The great resignation has forced employers to revisit how they evaluate, treat and reward their employees, but also how they attract new ones. But they're having candidates go through the same stupid process expecting different results. As in, "Here's the job description, send us your resume, let's take six to seven seconds to review it," rinse and repeat. And then they wonder why they're not getting enough candidates.
So let's rethink one of the most redundant benchmarks for entry into any type of role. Summarizing a lifetime of achievements isn't just hard for someone like Da Vinci. It's hard for everyone else. During a time where we celebrate authenticity and creativity, why are we asking for something so conformative and, frankly, boring? We can do better. Resumes not only force you to lie about your experience, they force you to use all these silly buzzwords that you would never use in the context of a real conversation. Like "orchestrated" or "spearheaded." People don't talk like that. Who are you, Dr. Evil?
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Yet if you're honest, you're just increasing your chances of getting rejected.
So what can we ask as an alternative to a resume? Well, we can conduct online skills assessments or request portfolios of work, like they already do in certain industries. We can ask for a video testimonial so we can assess one of the most important skills in any type of role -- communication. We can leverage technology to have candidates team with each other to solve a problem so we can assess how they work with other people. We can put candidates through simulations or situational assessments like an in tray exercise so we can see how they act in a specific scenario. Even better, we can gamify the entire process to engage candidates. This could be an online quiz or a challenge that would motivate goal-driven professionals. Heck, we can even invite candidates to our offices to solve a problem and then purposefully slow down their internet, just so we can see how they react under pressure.
But joking aside, the list goes on and on. Better leveraging technology, being more creative and having different options for people to apply will not only produce a better talent pool, it will also create a much more equitable workplace. And I know a lot of people won't agree with me. They'll say mixing things up costs time and money, but hiring the wrong person has a higher price. Almost 30 percent of their annual salary plus all the time it took for you to train them. Subsequently, it's all about building trust and a culture of belonging. If you ask any CEO about their culture, they'll say it's unique. But to apply to be a part of it is exactly the same as their competitors, which not only limits their options, they end up competing for the same type of talent which results in workplaces that lack diversity.
If your culture is inclusive, have people choose how they want to apply so they can customize their experience and put their best foot forward. Ultimately, there are better alternatives than the resume, and maybe we don't need to get rid of them completely. But do we need to obsessively rely on them just for the sake of what we're used to?
You don't need to be as talented or gifted or even have as much free time on your hands as Da Vinci to learn from him that you don't need to be defined by your resume. And once employers realize this, then we'll begin creating workplaces that feel welcoming to candidates even before they join. Plus, it will give us enough time to rethink cover letters, because those are really terrible.
Thank you.
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