Online profiles, serve as a repository to replicate this information into professional networking sites such as LinkedIn. Next to all of the fields correspond with a traditional resume. The difference is in how the information is presented and how we can interact with it.

A resume listing names of employers, educational institutions makes it easy for those hiring to match and offers us a false sense of security about the person they are hiring. Not forgetting that everything in a resume is subjective.

Imagine if all we had as recruiters when we received applications or viewed online profiles was an overview or career objective explaining the type of job the applicant was after and why. Perhaps with a list of their core skills and competencies and a few achievements listed to demonstrate these. Many recruiters would be lost. It would make the process more involved and would require a far superior skill level when it comes to recruiting, similar to that of a career coach perhaps. I cannot see this happening any time soon, and agree with you Irina that the resume will remain.

Kelly Magowan
http://www.sixfigures.com.au

Facebook and MySpace should be avoided so that we do not make any assumptions about people. Remember, the goal is to hire based on the skills the individual brings to the organization and not what they did or didn’t do Spring Break 2009.

Haven’t we seen enough resumes at all levels that lack a professional look and still don’t tell us enough. Down the road a site with video, presentations, recommendations, and other related information will be available to us and will partner with the ATS groups to ensure compliance.

I tend to agree with Robert that resumes will likely be around for a while. But additional web-based information about a candidate will be used more often in the near future, I think.

I am curious to hear opinions of hiring managers and HR people among the readers on one point in the article. If you get a list of links to profiles along with a standard resume submission from a recruiter today, would you make use of it? Would it be helpful? Or would you question and resist this practice (and if so, why)?

I totally agree. Ten years ago when I first started at Recruitsoft (now Taleo); we came out with a shock value ad that the resume would become extinct. It got a lot of attention, but here we are today with tens of millions of resumes. I am now at TalentDrive.

Irina, you raise some very visionary thoughts; however, adoption and change are often resisted within HR. Much of the innovation within talent acquisition in the last few years have been niche tools be it sourcing, assessment, name-gen, pre-screening via web… The F1000 are slow to adopt; so we are still at the early adopter phase of many of these excellent tools.

Regarding resumes we are looking at a current spend of billions of dollars worldwide on ATS and job posting/views. This will not unwind over night. The hiring workflow and business process in most of North America and Europe is resume centric.

Check out this link on fascinating statistics on recruiting:
http://vocuspr.vocus.com/VocusPR30/Url.aspx?521901×5387x-225465

The resume or CV is an important element in the employment process and is recognized internationally. The thought that it will become extinct and replaced with an assessment or some social media combo is a stretch anytime soon. It’s more likely that the assessment and social media links will become a part of the resume, which is already happening.

The Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures still apply to every employee selection process, at all US employers … and that’s a good thing, as Dr. Pulakos stated.

Job matching per the UGOESP still beats any alternative for predictive validity of job performance. Best-in-class job-matching assessment solutions compound the benefits.

Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin and other sites may prove a boon to sourcing, but unless individuals post their valid, job-related assessment results, the available information will not likely serve the hiring process any better than resumes do, today.

“Energy level” happens to be the first of nine behavioral scales on the total person assessment that I (and recruiters like Lou Adler) endorse, the Profile XT.

The Internet has made it all possible – i.e. making the expertise of Industrial-Organizational Psychologists affordable and accessible 24/7/365, through scientifically designed and professionally validated online assessment solutions, delivered with the latest technology.

Alignment with organizational culture, degree of employee engagement, relationship with boss and many other factors which may fall under the “Chemistry” umbrella can be objectively measured, too; and that’s where management begins … with measurement.

I simply urge professional recruiters (as well as hiring managers and HR professionals and business leaders) to complement their instincts with valid, job-related assessments, as they are already obliged (if not required) to do.

Todd, I’d be pleased to exchange emails (see below), or talk, should you want to pursue this topic, further.

Dick Melrose
President and CEO, Vision21
r.melrose@vision21.us

As for assessments, they can be predictors but past job performance probably weighs more heavily. What about chemistry? Energy level. Hard to get that in an assessment.

I’ll follow the instincts of a professional recruiter any day to digest all of the applicant qualities and serve up the best and brightest.

Resumes are a sales document, crafted to “get the interview”. Numerous studies have shown that roughly half of all resumes materially misstate facts (e.g. education, experience, dates …) and roughly 95% embellish and/or omit important details to gain favor. Professional resume writers know how the game works and “position” their clients’ resumes, accordingly. Automated resume screening and 15-second reviews by recruiters cannot add value to a stack of variously deceptive documents. Yet most employers rely on this woefully invalid “selection procedure” as the front end of their hiring process.

Bottom line: the content and processing of resumes frequently causes hiring managers to interview the wrong candidates.

Then, on to the interview — hardly a valid selection procedure, as widely practiced, today. Most interviews lack the proper structure and painfully few hiring managers requisite interviewing skills. Moreover, following multiple interviews, few employers invoke a validated process for combining inputs to make hiring decisions

Bottom line: employers who rely predominantly on resume reads and personal interviews tend to interview the wrong people, poorly, and then hire one of them based on ad hoc conclusions.

At the front end of the hiring process, resumes fail to deal with the large percentage of jobseekers who lack integrity, reliability and/or work ethic, as well as those who exhibit permissive attitudes toward substance abuse. Why even allow one of these people to become “applicants”?

The U. S. Department of Labor’s “Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures” has been around since 1978. This document tells employers how to avoid allegations of discrimination in the presence of adverse impact – i.e. use valid, job-related selection procedures. Employers who follow the DoL Guidelines perform a job analysis to document “what it takes” to perform capably in the position of interest and then use valid assessment tools to determine the extent to which applicants have what it takes.

In “Selection Assessment Methods – A guide to implementing formal assessments to build a high-quality workforce” (SHRM Foundation publication), Dr. Elaine D. Pulakos wrote: “It is important to point out that the procedures outlined in the Uniform Guidelines are, in fact, the same procedures that an assessment expert would employ if the only goal was to hire the best qualified candidates for a job.”

In 1980, an authoritative study published in the Harvard Business Review concluded that “the job-matching approach is far superior to the standard tack of hiring according to experience or education”. Those conclusions were based on large-sample job performance and turnover data within both high- and low-turnover industries. Moreover, the Guidelines require job matching – i.e. analyze the job and match candidates to it using valid, job-related measurements.

As the front-end of the hiring process, resumes have been on life support for decades.

Employers would do well to put pre-employment screening at the front end of their hiring process, followed by direct assessment (via online questionnaire) of basic qualifications derived from job analyses. Only with favorable results at both of these two initial stages should a jobseeker be invited to complete an application (become and applicant), as the next step in the process. Part of that application might well include one of several increasingly popular standard-format “profiles”, in lieu of resume.

All qualified applicants complete fully validated, job-matching assessments. The assessment instruments used should measure the total person, including cognitive, behavioral and occupational interest dimensions and should directly indicate the degrees of match with the position for which the individual seeks consideration. The assessment should also provide structured interview questions to probe areas of potential mismatch between the applicant and the position.

Naturally, structured interviews, simulations, reference checking, various background checks, drug tests and other assessments can make important additional contributions to the selection process, as long as the emphasis remains on job-related validity.

Recruiters, hiring managers, HR Professionals and business leaders should all take a fresh look at their employee selection procedures. To “hire the best”, you cannot start with resumes.

We have known “better ways” for three decades. And with today’s best-in-class web-based assessment solutions, employers can manage the selection process, superbly, while earning ROIs that few business initiatives can match. Doing it right doesn’t cost, it pays! Resume RIP.

Dick Melrose
President and CEO, Vision21
r.melrose@vision21.us

Imagine that in the future your resume is not about where you’ve worked, but rather what you’ve produced. So, for example, your Twitter tweets, blog comments, forum discussions, YouTube videos, Flickr images, Facebook status updates, LinkedIn recommendations, Amazon book reviews, and any other content you choose are all aggregated. But here’s the key: This brave new resume doesn’t include everything you generate, just the specific granular items you choose to be included. Each time you leave a digital impression you decide whether or not you want to tag it for inclusion in your cloud resume.

This ability to specifically tag content for inclusion means that a company can learn more about a candidate with less exposure to the sticky legal issues that can accompany “raw” internet searching.

You can find the full article here – http://cloudrecruiting.net/a-brave-new-resume/

Scott Hajer

Timely post, online profiles & personal (social media) branding are a hot topic. I recently posted about the power of your social media brand and the importance it plays in your career search:

http://thecorporateplaybook.blogspot.com/2009/03/do-you-pass-google-test-your-online.html#links

To Candice’s point we are searching out online profiles (even if we don’t admit it) to get a full understanding of how candidates present themselves.

However from a candidates perspective this can provide a great opportunity (if you manage your online brand). There is only so much they can present in a resume but as a candidate leveraging their blog, linkedin, facebook etc. to showcase their talents can provide them a tremendous boost in their career search.

At http://www.TheCorporatePlaybook.com we fully embrace this concept. Our community of current & alumni student athletes are able to build their personal athlete profile which includes video resume, detailed bios, outbound links etc. and is publicly searchable. We feel the ability to provide more than a basic resume is a tremendous value to both candidates & recruiters.

Thanks for the post & I look forward to this topic.

Cheers,

Chad Pinkston

Part of my job is to search candidates by name and find their online profiles; not only to do some basic research, but to add them to our network. We don’t have a ton of openings right now, but know what will happen when the market improves (flood gates will open!).

It’s tough to convince administrative “types” to sign up on social networking sites, but we’re making progress. This article is proof of why they need to get in the game. Not only is technology an important part of today’s workplace but if they don’t have an online presence, a candidate might be overlooked for someone who is easily found online (vs. just a paper resume).