News & Information

CCH® HR MANAGEMENT — 7/24/06

Use of resume may be a thing of the past

The candidate resume, long regarded as the cornerstone of employment search and fulfillment, is dying a slow, painful death, according to recruitment professionals at MRINetwork, one of the world’s largest search and recruitment organizations. Despite candidate shortages and the impending retirement of large numbers of Baby Boomers, the resume is no longer an effective tool for employers seeking to fill critical positions within their companies. Human resources managers and recruiters are getting more resumes than ever before, but a significant percentage of them—perhaps as high as one-third to one-half—are never reviewed.

Internet makes resume submission too simple. Candidate awareness of employment opportunities has driven the marked increase in resume submissions. Before the job board era, passive candidates did not have easy access to the universe of job openings. "Now candidates search openings via job boards 24 hours a day, 365 days a years," says Kent Burns, a partner at MRINetwork Management Recruiters of Indianapolis-North and a search consultant specializing in finance. "With resume submission only a mouse click away, they often apply to multiple positions. It's not uncommon for me to contact candidates who confess to applying to so many job postings that they haven't a clue which one I’m calling about."

Compounding the problem with job boards is the lack of standardization, which creates a challenge with classification, storage, retrieval and comparability. Companies have found that having hundreds of disparate resumes and a text search function is only marginally better than having hundreds of paper resumes. "The lack of meaningful filters creates inconsistency—and even chaos—while draining important HR resources," maintains Burns.

There is also an inherent risk, Burns believes, in relying too heavily on the resume as an indicator of talent and ability. "Errors, exaggerations and even lies are all part of the resume landscape," he says. "These tactics transfer the burden of validation to the company's interviewing process, and often the inaccuracies go undetected until the new hire is on the job and problems begin to surface."

A potential alternative. Burns advocates the creation of a new kind of job application that will provide a standardized format for capturing, comparing, searching and archiving candidate information. Further, he recommends an approach that will allow a hiring manager to define the information that the candidate provides in a format that makes optimal sense for the company and will use objective talent quality filters through validated assessment tools.

"Using this method, the job applicant will supply only the information deemed critical by the employer," says Burns, "and will then complete the assessment battery." From all the data that is gathered, a report will be created and assigned a score. The candidate score will be compared with the "cut score" established by the employer to determine if the candidate should be scheduled for an interview.

For additional information on this and other HR topics, consult CCH Human Resources Management or Personnel Practices/Communications.

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