Recruiting: The Problem With Resumes

Its been a grueling week of interviewing candidates. Lots of candidates. My client has a strategic initiative that requires a number of talented natural athletes with a mixture of skills and experience. The role doesn’t really exist today in the marketplace, although key components of it do in fairly established tactical functions in the manufacturing, automotive and aerospace industry. My client is in financial services.  What we are attempting is to elevate what is a traditionally tactical manufacturing role into a highly strategic relationship management position looking after some of the most critical parts of an organization at executive levels. Its pretty disruptive change internally, and highly difficult to find the right profiles externally. Forgive me for being vague, but client confidentiality comes first.

Having set the scene, the challenge that many hiring companies are facing today is finding the right people for the role. This challenge is made even more difficult by the fact that there is a very real disconnect between what the resumes (or curriculum vitae) of candidates say and who shows up on interview day. To be clear, this is not about having the right processes or systems in place to screen candidates appropriately. And its not about having competent HR and recruiting partners working with you. Trust me, my client has an army of them and they are all very competent. The challenge is that hiring managers, internal HR managers and external recruiters are depending heavily on the resume to glue everything together. Except the interpretation of resumes are rarely accurate and can lead to wasting lots of people’s time, especially your own.

A great example of interpretation of resumes and CVs going wrong is illustrated in a recent article by serial entrepreneur and author Jo Owen where she makes the case for experienced CV reviewers analyzing strengths highlighted in the resume in order to reveal weaknesses. Essentially, what you say in your resume they hear quite differently. Here are the examples she sites:

Þ   -> Analytical and insightful: Doesn’t get people and achieves nothing.

Þ   -> Very goal focused: Ambitious, tramples over people.

Þ   -> Entrepreneurial: Not a team player; largely uncontrollable, won’t fit in.

Þ   -> Great team player: Yes man; little drive or initiative; blindly follows insane orders.

Þ   -> Good networker: Politically devious and untrustworthy.

Þ   -> Honest and reliable: I can find no meaningful strengths in this person.

Þ   -> High achiever: Puts self ahead of anything or anyone else.

Þ   -> Empathetic: Likes hugging people and trees, expect neither action nor insight

Þ   -> Mature: Past it, low energy levels.

Þ   -> Expert: Anorak who will bore you to tears, cannot manage and lives in a silo.

Þ   -> Strong values: Opinionated, fully signed up member of the awkward squad.

Þ   -> Outstanding leader: “My way or no way” person who doesn’t like working for others.

Þ   -> Diligent: Boring plodder who stays in the box.

Þ   -> Action oriented: Shoots first, thinks second, dangerous liability.

Þ   -> Strong track record of success: Good at telling fairy stories, likes to steal the credit.

Owen goes on to say “All of this confirms what most job seekers fear: you can’t win. Whatever you say or do will be taken down as evidence and will be used against you.” However, I think the more important point is what should recruiters be doing to minimize wasting everyone’s time? HR policies, processes and interview protocols can sometimes be rigid and cumbersome, especially in big organizations, and this can prevent hiring managers from focusing on the single most important recruitment activity – getting to know the person.

Organizations that value their people as their most important asset understand the importance of getting to know the people they hire, almost on a personal level. Experience, skills, education and accomplishments are extremely important criteria when hiring, but looking at these elements of a person’s background in a vacuum is what often leads to hiring mistakes. People can look great on paper. The best way to avoid a hiring error is by having the right person in the organization screen a candidate on a short phone call. Have a short chat, ask them a basic social question and then sit back and listen to what they have to say, how they say it and engage in that conversation. 

I once screened a guy named Jamal for a sales position. When Jamal picked up I introduced myself and asked him what he was looking for in a position and why he applied to our post. Jamal explained that after spending 7 years overseas he was looking for an organization where he could work hard, learn and prove himself professionally. I quickly rescanned his resume looking for whether he had served in the military, but found nothing. I asked what he was doing overseas and Jamal explained that he had played professional basketball in countries like Argentina, Italy and even Iran. He was now back home in the US and ready to begin his second profession. The conversation lasted all of about 8 minutes but I came away with a good understanding of this pro-athlete who was competitive, disciplined and determined to win. I invited him in for a first round interview. Sounds pretty simple, but most organizations do not take the time to do this, and if they do, its usually conducted by a junior recruitment person in HR who is not close enough to the requirement to know if a candidate is worth bringing in.

Recruitment is truly an art and a game changer, with many aspects that have to be managed carefully in order to hire the right people. Hiring mistakes cost an organization a lot of money and time. A hiring set back can impact several quarters if sales cycles are long, for example. But simplicity is the key to successful recruiting and a short 10 minute phone conversation to screen the person behind a ‘good looking’ resume can go a long way.