Not Worth The Paper It’s Printed On: Bye-bye, Resumes.
TL;DR: Why would anyone ever use a resume for any reason? Let’s just stop and do better, cooler things.
Disclaimer: These are my personal opinions based on personal experiences, and in no way reflect company policy at Learning Economy nor any organizations mentioned or referenced within.
For the last year, give or take, I’ve been Community Director for Learning Economy. It’s an amazing company, and I’m thrilled to have the opportunity.
As Community Director, I wear a lot of hats. Sometimes, I’m managing our flexible-intern program, the Learning Economy Ambassadors. Other times, I connect with advisors & partners. And yet other times, I screen resumes & interview people.
At this job and others, I’ve looked at dozens of resumes. Short, brief resumes with carefully curated quality nuggets, long-winded resumes full of accolades of every stripe. Resumes with typos, resumes with pictures, resumes that are websites, resumes that are videos. And I’ve learned one thing: Resumes are absolutely worthless.
I’ll break it down into 4 key points, starting with . . .
#1 — Resumes Are For Liars
Okay, so that’s a little extreme. But seriously, think about it: no one is under any obligation to tell the truth on their resume. In my personal experience, I have never had a single hiring manager make a call to my references, ask for clarification on my college transcripts, or do any sort of follow-up whatsoever.
Beyond that: it’s so easy to simply lie for the accolades. I met a man once who had been lying to his family for nearly a decade about not graduating college. Even his employer thought he had a degree, and this was a highly technical profession that called for years and years of education. He’s a brilliant, competent, wonderful man, but his career is founded on a lie. That’s pretty rough.
Even on a national level, falsifying resumes has some serious consequences. In 2012, former Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson was fired after lying about his degree on a resume. And in 2007, former MIT Admissions Dean Marilee Jones was booted from a 28-year long career for lying about having 3 degrees! Even Harvard has had its fair share of resume scandals.
A system that allows egregious lies to stand for nearly three decades is one that doesn’t work. From a hiring perspective, it necessitates extreme attention to detail and meticulous follow-through (or a dangerously laissez-faire attitude). From a job-seeking perspective, it seems that resumes almost reward dishonesty and fluff. Speaking of fluff . . .
#2- Resumes Cater to the Chameleon
Okay, honest people of the world: how many times have you told the truth on a resume in such a way that made you feel a little icky? You know what I’m talking about:
“Boots-on-the-ground product expert for a multi-billion dollar corporation” (translation: Sandwich Artist at Subway)
“Customer Service Ninja for a Fortune 10 company” (translation: Cashier at CVS)
There is absolutely nothing wrong with putting a frank, factual job title on your resume. It allows an HR professional to get a real, accurate picture of what you do. You worked at McDonald’s for 3 years as a line cook? Amazing. You understand the operations side of one of the most successful retail models in the world. You were an Uber driver for 6 months? Spectacular. You probably have a great perspective on customer relations, and certainly have the drive to start your own gig that many people don’t.
And yet, I see fluffy nonsense like the above make it into resume after resume. Those keywords hit the algorithms that automated resume screening tools are primed to search out, placing this nonsense in front of potential employers more often than frank, to-the-point resumes. Changing the keywords of your resume has no real bearing on how strong of a candidate you are, unless you’re looking for someone to manipulate keyword algorithms. This strategy doesn’t show who the candidate is as a whole, only what they think an employer wants to see. In my experience, resume quality is unrelated to candidate quality. In fact, there may be an inverse relationship between the two. Resumes don’t usually measure the qualities I’m looking for in a candidate, which brings me to . . .
#3- Resumes Don’t Show Everything
The #1 quality resumes are useful for measuring is self-knowledge. How well do you know yourself, your strengths & weaknesses, and how to sell yourself? This can be important in your personal life, and often translates to professional proficiency in some areas, but isn’t the sole indicator of candidate quality. You could be an absolutely spectacular candidate with incredible technical and professional skills, a great workplace personality and a kind heart, but without a serious level of self-knowledge your resume could be a dud.
How do resumes measure congeniality? Under what section should I look to see an accurate picture of your work ethic? Where can I look to understand the way you form workplace relationships, the way you treat your coworkers, or how you operate in a stressful environment? These things are absolutely vital in a hire, and seeing “Works well with others. Team player. High performer under pressure” just doesn’t cut it.
Sure, maybe an absolutely stellar resume could hint at the veracity of these claims, but expecting folks to have specifically honed a skill that will only be useful every 3 years or so is unreasonable. Having great resume skills usually doesn’t translate into better work performance, and is almost never useful in the workplace.
I’ve given offers to candidates with great resumes, who’ve ended up ghosting (why is that a thing recently?). And we’ve welcomed incredible, hard-working, quality people to the team without even so much as a formal job application. Clearly, resumes aren’t showing the whole picture, or even the most important parts of it. If we’re going to choose an ineffective hiring tool, let’s at least choose one that isn’t so boring.
#4 — Resumes are BORING.
I’m happily-relationshipped, so if I seem flippant bringing up Tinder as an example here, please yell at me.
Tinder users are famous for the creative and unusual techniques they employ to attract potential partners. From displays of attentiveness (“I cross-referenced pictures of flowers on Google Images with the flower crown you’re wearing in your picture. I too love Rosy Spirea.”), to humorous non-sequiturs (“Hey babe, wanna come over and squish some bugs?”), to overt sexual advances ([insert unsolicited picture of something that’s “honestly bigger than it looks”]), Tinder users have stretched their creativity to the absolute limits when searching for simple hookups. Why don’t we encourage potential employees to do the same? Isn’t a job opportunity a more important decision than a little consensual fun?
Going through resumes is a slog. I would be thrilled to see an interpretive dance piece on “Why I‘m The Next Elon Musk”, or challenge an Ambassador candidate to a game of Monopoly. Would you rather grab a beer/coffee/healthy cup of H20 with a potential hire and watch a baseball game, or read a dumb piece of paper? Even a simple skills test can tell a lot about a candidate. Let’s face it: resumes are for the lazy.
People don’t want to invest real time into their hires. And that’s what it really comes down to. Employers are hesitant to invest in their employees before they make the actual hire. What people don’t realize is investing in a hire found through half-baked means might be even more risky. The solution? Be inquisitive, be generous. Most importantly, be human. It requires serious bravery and investment to dive deep into each and every candidate that crosses your path. Lord knows I skim more often than I’d like. And, as I’ve heard from a friend in HR, when you’ve got a requisition with hundreds of applicants, you can give each candidate maybe one second, max.
But we on the employer side of things can change the status quo. Stop asking for resumes, and instead ask for poetry. Replace the cover letter field on your submission platform with a link to the Sorting Hat quiz on Pottermore. Make it standard practice to go grab a bite with everyone who sends in a resume. At the very least, stop using your resume screener and actually read about the people you might be entering into an important professional relationship with.
Final Thoughts: The Future of Resumes
The idea of resumes comes from the right place. But when you have wildly different resume standards, self-selected qualities and credentials, and no real way to verify the truth of these things, the original idea crumbles into something ineffective.
Organizations around the world are working tirelessly to change that. APPII aims to use blockchain to verify your skills and achievements to employers. Learning Economy advisors at ScienceAtHome are creating games that measure valuable soft skills. And at Learning Economy, we’re aiming to create a future where your identity, skills & experiences are mapped onto a graph that can follow you across borders throughout your life.
Until this future arrives, let’s try to innovate the hiring process in any way we can.
Thanks to Abbey Hege, Travis Chambers & Jacksón C. Smith for proofreading!
Want to hear about the craziest hiring process I’ve ever experienced? Follow me to be the first to read “How Japan Killed the Weeb”, a series on my time with the JET Program.
