A Résumé By Itself Has No Meaning

There are many reasons why electronic recruiting doesn’t work efficiently.  Electronic recruiting means sending (or receiving) a résumé via email or text or a recruitment web site.  It does not work well because a résumé needs to be seen in context.  Let me explain.

I once bought the recruitment practice from a consulting firm; I was really interested in the 5,000 or so senior résumés that they had.  Unfortunately, it didn’t work and was an expensive mistake. Here is how I learned a valuable lesson which should be understood by all job hunters as well as anyone screening résumés.

What I got when I bought this firm’s records, was about 5,000 résumés of top advertising executives.  In addition to paying a lot for them, I also had to have a trucker bring them all to me.

When they arrived in several file boxes, I quickly became overwhelmed.  I decided to put each résumé into one of several piles: people I already knew, people whose names I recognized and wanted to meet and, finally, the largest pile, people I did not know. I then divided the did not know pile into two piles – people whose background was of interest and people whose backgrounds held no interest for me. I threw out those I had no interest in – which was the bulk of the files.

I quickly realized an important fact of recruiting.  Résumés are merely a piece of paper with some ink on them.  If I have interviewed someone, even if it was years ago, when I look at  their résumé it conjures up something, a sense of who they are.  If I have not met them, the résumé is merely words on a piece of paper and mean nothing, conjure nothing.  This is especially true if I have no idea of the salary of the person.  There is just no context.

I always made my notes on the back of résumés – salary, observations, thoughts about the candidate.  If I look at a CV where I have written notes, it has meaning.  I use those notes when introducing a candidate to a client.  But a résumé without notes is just a blank piece of paper.  And computers make it worse.  They are just words for me to look at.  And that is why electronic recruiting doesn’t work efficiently.  CV's received electronically can only be looked at as key words.  Sure, you can form an opinion based on where someone has worked and what they have accomplished (if it is on the résumé) but a résumé cannot tell you if someone is analytical, smart, has leadership skills or is exciting or boring. 

I receive many complaints from CEO’s and other senior company officers that they are not happy either with the people they are seeing or are actually hired.  The problem is that their companies are only doing online recruiting to avoid paying recruitment fees.  They may be saving money but they are probably not seeing the best candidates.

With few exceptions, the best candidates are probably not using the internet to search for job.