Job Hunting and the Efficacy of the Modern Resume

Since I'm back on the job hunt again after a 10 year stint at my last company, it's been interesting to be on the applicant side of the equation. Over the past decade, I was involved in hiring dozens of people which equates to well over a thousand resumes that crossed my desk. I was the hiring manager for some of the positions, part of a hiring team for others or perhaps the one-over manager.
In other cases, I wasn't involved at all but was pulled into a quick interview to help get a good feel for the candidates if there was question as to fit or multiple similar candidates.

Thinking back to the process, I remember a massive time commitment required to get together a good job description, work with human resources or recruiting to begin the process, review the resumes, perform a phone screen and then schedule and conduct one or more in person interviews.

I'm sure you are thinking "So what? It takes time to locate good people!" I agree. The problem is that the process wasn't always finding good people. It found people. Some of them were poor, some of them were good and very, very few of them were great. Overall, we were spending a disproportionate amount of time to ending up with B's and C's when, it's really important in any company to have A players in the key roles.

Most companies don't spend a lot (any) time to train managers how to hire well. Why not? Perhaps because they don't know either. It might be worth asking that question around your company because at minimum, you should be sharing tips and techniques to make the hiring process in terms of qualitative efforts similar. Too often, the process discipline in merely that of scheduling when it should be more focused on content.

Overall, there really needs to be some thought in transforming the hiring process. The best people have skills and techniques will often never surface in on a resume. The best folks I know and have worked with would not stand out in a field of resumes. Everyone incorporates the same techniques in those documents to try to get noticed and use the right buzzwords, etc.  

If you do get past the resume screen, there's another problem. You can't demonstrate leadership, commitment, dedication or most skills in an interview. You can talk about all of those things, but you can't do them. Not in a half hour to an hour session. You can interview very well by talking about those things... about being inclusive and smart and bringing value to your employer. That might very well get you the job. But are you the best fit? Maybe, but probably not. It really comes down to luck in many cases.


Sites like Linkedin.com are trying to help with this process via recommendations and endorsements. Unfortunately, that is flawed as well. Just like references that you get during the background check, the core issue is that you have to trust the reference, the recommend-er or the endorser. And you shouldn't. Why not? You don't know them at all. You have no relation with them nor proof that they have good judgement. Not to mention that those sources are mostly self-selected and bound to be positive.

It is getting harder and harder to get good results out of a hiring process as a result. Once the new hire starts, everything goes from theoretical to actual and only then can you begin to understand what value they bring and whether they are a good fit. But many places do not have established ways of evaluating a new hire to ensure that they are working effectively and/or are getting the right training and orientation.

Plenty of people have suggested solutions to this process. But having tried some of these solutions, it all comes back down to the fact that you hire based on potential and not actual performance. Where does that leave us? Right where we started. Time for me to get back to the job search. I'll let you know how it goes.