Résumés Only Tell Part Of The Story

I recently did a search for a president on a retainer. I initially submitted four carefully thought out candidates along with a long written introduction on each.  The CEO turned the search over to a subordinate who asked to see three of the candidates.  The person she eliminated was actually my favorite and the best of the four, but he had the weakest resume.  No explanation was given nor could I convince the screener to allow this person an interview. I had to call the CEO and beg him to see my candidate. You know the rest, this candidate was hired.

Just a couple of weeks ago, Richard Branson, maverick founder of Virgin Airways and other wonderful companies, posted an article on LinkedIn in which he claimed that when hiring, he focuses in on personality rather than the résumé.  I couldn't agree more.

Many really good people don't necessarily have perfect résumés, yet many of them turn out to be what I call a top 5% candidate.  The problem is that many of them have unusual backgrounds which don’t fit the cookie cutter mold.

They often come from smaller agencies and work on accounts that are considered by mainstream agencies to be unsophisticated.  It would be very easy to bypass these people, but over the years, I have made it a point to see them.

Years ago, I met a wonderful woman who worked for a New York agency that I had never heard of (in those days, I used to actually read the Redbook).  She came out of the costume jewelry business and worked on an unsophisticated, unknown fashion account.  I thought she was sensational.  

I called the head of Human Resources at one of the largest agencies and, because of my personal relationship with him, was able to get him to see her.  He saw what I saw in her and got her placed on a very large and sophisticated piece of business as an account supervisor.  The rest is history: during the past twenty years she has become one of the best advertising people in the business and is now an EVP at one of the major agencies, running a huge worldwide piece of CPG business.

People like this need an advocate with a personal rapport with either HR or a hiring manager.

In today’s marketplace, a person like this EVP would probably not succeed to the degree that she already has; her background would probably not appeal to the people screening on-line job board postings or even the résumés sent by recruiters.  In-house recruiters would be far too busy looking for specific, cookie-cutter attributes for current openings and would not see her (most job specs merely contain a check list of experience and of duties, but rarely voice the problem(s) which need to be solved).  Even some recruiters on my side of the business would reject her because of her odd-ball résumé.

And while I rarely market candidates (calling without a specific assignment), I could be an advocate for her when I had something that I thought she could do.  My relationship with an agency allowed me to get her hired.

Over the years I have placed many people like her.

People should not use check lists in order to determine if a candidate is right for a job.  Résumés only tell part of the story.  And, as they say, you cannot tell a book by its cover, or a person by their résumé.