As a business, you obviously want to hire the best of the best. Employees are the linchpin of your business after all, and what they’re able to accomplish will ultimately determine your company’s success.
Now the most obvious way to go about talent acquisition is to simply post online job opening and setup an application process where jobseekers and referrals can submit their resumes for you to review. You’ll then go through the process of narrowing down the field of candidates by going through their resumes and selecting the applicants that seem to be the best fit for the job. While you might think this process is tried and true, basing your hiring decisions heavily upon an applicant’s resume can actually be a costly mistake. Here’s why:
1.Resumes focus on experience
The majority of the real estate on a resume is spent describing work experience. However, studies have found that past work experience is one of the weakest indicators of an employee’s future job success – and guess what? – It’s only going to become weaker. The fact is technology is changing how we do things at such a rapid pace, that how we tackle our jobs tomorrow will require a totally different approach from how we tackled it yesterday. This evolution devalues work experience and puts a larger emphasis on skills – which is something resumes can list out, but not fully showcase.
2. Resume writing services are on the come up
One of the major reasons why resumes are so valued to begin with is that employers use it to evaluate an applicant’s writing skills. However, more often than ever now, job seekers are resorting to resume writing services to construct their resumes for them. So instead of having to put pen onto paper and write the resume themselves, job seekers are hiring a professional resume writer to do the work for them.
While these services may come in super handy for some job seekers, it’s a nightmare for employers looking to gauge applicants’ writing abilities through the quality of the resumes submitted. In fact, it can be even be counterproductive for them. Someone with terrible writing skills can appear like a writing savant in the eyes of recruiters if they simply hire someone to write their resume for them.
3. LinkedIn has arrived
A resume isn’t the only professional way to summarize a jobseeker’s achievements now. LinkedIn has reached over 500 million users, and the LinkedIn profile jobseekers create are arguably even more informative and comprehensive than a resume. There’s the option to get endorsements for skills, build connections, and show interests – all of which can’t really be done on an old-fashioned resume. In fact, applying for job openings available on LinkedIn don’t require submitting a resume at all, which is just further that resumes are becoming obsolete.
4. Video Interviewing works
Video interview software is becoming more and more advanced, enabling companies to interview a huge number of applicants using AI systems. Video also makes the recruitment procedure a more personal process and allows recruiters to get a feel for the applicant’s personality and overall appeal. Sophisticated video interview software are even able to grade candidate responses and determine which ones will be a strong cultural fit without needing an actual recruiter to make any of the decisions. This allows video interviewing to be used for a huge applicant pool when this method would otherwise not be practical for. The continual advent of innovative ways to both find and evaluate applicants is ultimately diminishing the role resumes play in the hiring game to the point where one day, it might just be obsolete.
