However, if you consider omitting information that could directly help the applicant successfully understand the process or land a job to be a lie, then there are quite a few areas where corporations are omitting the complete truth.

I call them “dirty little secrets” because insiders are well aware of them, while most applicants and business reporters are not. If you are a recruiter, you may find that this list includes over-generalizations, but in my experience, the problems in this list are certainly not unusual. My recommendation is that corporate leaders need to identify the areas where there is a distinct lack of openness, candor, and authenticity in the recruiting process and instead to proactively provide that information to applicants.

Recruiting Dirty Little Secrets

Here are a dozen areas where corporate recruiting could improve.

• The corporate black hole — because of recruiter overload, the volume of applicants, and technology problems, a resume submitted to a corporate career site may actually have a zero probability of being reviewed. In the industry, it can be referred to as “the black hole.”
• Looking for an excuse to drop you — there are books written about the need to focus on the positive aspects of individuals, but the entire screening process is often focused on finding a single error or lack of “fit” to quickly eliminate any applicant. If you are categorized as a job-jumper, you are unemployed, you have bad credit or Klout scores, you live in a distant zip code, or they find weird things on Facebook about you, you will be immediately rejected without knowing why. As a result, those who fail to make a single mistake during the process, rather than those who are the best, are the ones that are most likely to get hired.
• The rejection letter is designed to avoid complaints, not accuracy – if you actually get a rejection letter or e-mail, you should be aware that canned phrases like “we decided to move in another direction” or “there were other more qualified candidates” are pretested or lawyer-approved phrases that are designed to quiet you and keep you from making a follow-up inquiry. In many cases, the person sending the letter won’t even know the actual reason for your rejection.
• The interview process will likely be disjointed – applicants invited in for interviews routinely complain about disorganized interviewing, death by interview (having to go through 10 or more interviews), continually getting the same repeat questions from different interviewers, and having to return multiple times on different days. If the process seems poorly managed and disjointed, it is probably because it usually is. The overall corporate interview process is more often more whimsical than scientific and integrated.
• Some jobs are not really available to outsiders — although legal requirements may require an organization to post all open jobs, in some cases, the hiring manager has already predetermined that they will hire internally. There is no way for an external applicant to know when a job is “wired,” so applying can only lead to frustration and you will never know that you did nothing wrong.
• Some companies are blocked — if you work at a company covered by an informal “non-poaching” arrangement where two firms agree not to hire from each other, your chances of getting hired are near zero. Even though these agreements are illegal, they are secret, so your application will never be considered and you will never know why.
• Recruiters won’t know if you are a customer – you might think that being a loyal customer might help your application, but most corporations have no formal way of identifying an applicant as a customer.
• We will keep your resume on file (but we will never look at it again) – is certainly true that when they tell you that your rejected application will be “kept on file” it will be. However, it will be kept almost exclusively for legal reasons. The odds of a recruiter scanning through a corporate database of thousands of names in order to revisit a resume that has previously been rejected are miniscule. Unless a recruiter remembers you by name, assume that your resume has been dropped into the “black hole.”
• You will never know the real odds – although corporations regularly calculate the percentage of all applicants that are hired, you will never find that number on the corporate website. Although the lotto is required to publish your odds of winning, corporations keep it a secret. For some jobs, the odds are well over 1,000 to 1.
• Technology may eliminate you — and most large organizations, resumes are initially screened electronically. Unfortunately, if the software is not fine-tuned, the recruiter is not well-trained, or if you fail to use the appropriate keywords and phrases, no human will ever see your resume. In one test, only 12% of specially written “perfect resumes” made it through this initial step, although in theory, 100% should have made it.
• Busy people are forced to take shortcuts — during a down economy, the volume of qualified applicants can force recruiters and hiring managers to take shortcuts. For example, recently a coordinator asked the recruiter which one of a handful of resumes should be invited in for an interview. The response was “I don’t have time to look at them; just flip a coin and pick them.” Hiring managers are also known to make choices based on snap judgments or stereotypes that add a degree of randomness to getting a job.
• Don’t call us, we’ll call you — if an applicant is rejected at any stage, there is no formal process to help you understand where you need to improve in order to be successful when applying for a job in the future. Unlike in customer service, there is no 1 -800 number to call, and because of weak corporate documentation, recruiting might not actually know (beyond a broad reason) why you are rejected and how you could improve your chances.

Final Thoughts

Almost without exception, corporate recruiters are hard-working and ethical people. But most are too overworked to be able to take a step back and to formally assess where the recruiting process could be more open, honest, and transparent. Unfortunately, most of the current “candidate experience” efforts that I have seen are focused more on increasing courtesy and politeness rather than being significantly more open, honest, and transparent. If you would like to add to this list of “secrets,” add them to the comments section immediately following this article on www.ere.net.

So this morning we discover that Talent Technology did the swooping and scooped up the site for job seeker portfolios. Financial details weren’t in the announcement, but Talent Technology made clear the site would continue. “The service will continue to operate as a standalone offering,” said Talent Technology.

Just in case you don’t recognize the corporate name, Talent Technology is the Canadian firm that sells the HireDesk ATS, and a sourcing system it calls Talementry. A new version of the latter was just released.

Even if you’re not a job seeker, and don’t plan on being one, VisualCV is worth a look. It’s a great place to showcase work for anyone building or managing their personal brand. It supplements your LinkedIn profile.

As Amybeth Hale wrote on our sister site, SourceCon, the site enables professionals “to easily build and manage an online career portfolio that comes alive with informational keyword pop-ups, video, pictures, and professional networking.”

All good for VisualCV, but what’s in it for Talent Technology? The announcement doesn’t really say. There’s only this: “As part of Talent Technology, users can also look forward to new innovations to help them create even more engaging online resumes faster and easier in the future.”

For users of the site, VisualCV says everything will stay as is, except that it will now be free. The premium service is being discontinued. Subscribers should already have gotten a refund.

StartWire was founded by Chris Forman, former CEO of AIRS, and Tim McKegney, who was previously EVP at AIRS. It launched this year with the promise of helping job seekers avoid the black hole and connect with a network of trusted friends and business connections for advice and job referrals.

Forman said StarWire would use the funds to grow its development team and speed product enhancements, as well as for marketing.

Bullhorn on a roll

Recruiting software provider Bullhorn reported new bookings and paid user count were both up over 40 percent compared to the same period in 2010. Heavy demand pushed usage to over one billion transactions per month, the company said.

The one billion monthly transactions include about 150,000 new and filled job orders as well more than a million job seeker views. Between the company’s recruitment CRM and social recruiting product lines, over 45,000 users across more than 5,000 companies rely on Bullhorn.

The company also announced this week the release of  Bullhorn Time and Expense. The new module for its ATS and CRM software platform provides online time and expense management and integration with accounting and payroll systems.

iCIMS partners with Payscale

iCIMS, a provider of talent acquisition and management technology, has partnered with PayScale. Now, iCIMS 1,000+ customers will have access to detailed compensation information for 13,000 job titles in all cities in the U.S., Canada, and seven other English-speaking countries. PayScale solutions allow companies to design and implement a compensation strategy tied to business results and ensure competitiveness in what has been a volatile talent market.

New twist on resume search

Urecuitme.com is a new jobs site that skips the posting part of job boarding, instead selling access to its resume database. Recruiters pay a flat fee to search for candidates, then pay up to $300 to contact those on the shortlist.

The business model is pretty much the same as LinkedIn Recruiter or buying only the Monster or CareerBuilder resume database, though all three sites likely have millions more resumes and profiles than does the Atlanta startup. The other differentiator appears to be that candidates also must take an assessment test as part of the registration process.

Google+ stalling?

Could be that Google+ has hit a wall. Or it could just be the plateau effect at work (as in loads of publicity generates lots of traffic, that then drops off, but at a higher level where it was prior to the publicity.)

Whatever the cause, Chitka says that Google+ traffic soared 1,200 percent in the days after its public launch on Sept. 20, then fell by 60 percent. The data analytics company is evidently in the “failure to launch” camp, suggesting in prior posts that the site peaked late in July and has been sliding ever since, public launch and publicity notwithstanding.

The carefully planned launch had been scheduled to occur tomorrow, but an error in distributing the press release forced the company to lift the embargo it had placed on bloggers, analysts, and others who got a preview of the service earlier this week.

It’s a straightforward search, identical in most regards to the site’s job search. It is keyword based, though it will accept some Boolean and Google query types. Searches can be easily narrowed by simply selecting from a menu on the left that shows up on results pages.

Searching and reviewing resumes is free and will remain that way. But contacting the candidates — free for now — will eventually cost. How much, said Chris Hyams, Indeed’s VP of Product, who piloted the demos, won’t be released for a while.

For now, the “goal is to introduce the system to as many people as possible,” said Hyams.

Job seekers will appreciate the simplicity of the system. It accepts all forms of resumes and will import a user’s LinkedIn profile. Users can elect to keep the resume private and not findable in a search, or make it public. In the latter case, the contact information is stripped out. Employers use a form to contact the job seeker, who decides whether or not to respond. Job seekers can also apply to jobs they find on Indeed with their resume.

The interface, said Hyams, was designed for ease of use. “We always start with the question: What is best for the job seeker?”

Since Indeed began collecting resumes several months ago it was only a matter of time before the site offered resume search. After more than a million resumes, the time, obviously, has come.

Even Hyams more or less joked about the resume service being an open secret, especially to the job boards whose relationship with Indeed can best be described as “frenemy.”

“This is not going to be an earth-shattering surprise,” Hyams said earlier this week during a preview.

Pardon the pun, but indeed it isn’t. There’s been no response from the job boards, nor is it likely any of them will have much to say publicly. Many of them are Indeed customers, buying PPC ads to drive traffic to their own sites. Many of them, though far fewer these days, depend on Indeed to distribute their own listings to a broader market.

Indeed and SimplyHired, the two leading job search engines, built their business by scraping listings from job boards. But in the nearly seven years they’ve been at it, both sites have developed relationships directly with employers. Many of them provide a daily feed of their jobs to each site. Many of the job boards do that, too.

However, in the last year, fewer listings from job boards have been showing up in searches on Indeed and SimplyHired. The CEOs of both sites told me directly they are not discriminating against job board listings, but clearly, the preference in cases where the same listing comes from a direct employer and also from a job board is to go with the employer’s listing.

It’s a matter of benefiting the job seeker, Indeed’s Paul Forster told me, as did SimplyHired’s CEO Gautam Godhwani. The employer’s listing is one click closer than the job board’s.

Yet, as recently as a few weeks ago, I’ve heard from job board operators who insist they’ve been told by employees at one or the other of the search sites that there are problems with the format of their feed, or they have poor quality listings, or they have been the subject of job seeker complaints, or … In each case the operators swear they’ve made no changes and had been indexed previously, in some cases for years.

For smaller job boards, the traffic from Indeed and SimplyHired — now the 3rd and 4th most trafficked job sites respectively — can be critical. Some job boards exist almost entirely because of the distribution they get from the two search sites, so not being indexed can spell disaster.

Listings from CareerBuilder and Monster, mainstays of the jobs inventory for both sites for years, have also dramatically diminished in volume. A Monster spokesman said his company never provided a direct feed of its listings, but was scraped. Any change there was made by the search sites. However, he added that Monster has seen no impact on its traffic. A comment echoed by CareerBuilder.

The experience reminded me how much responsibility hiring entities have to maintain the confidentially of the executives they interview. There are at least five areas where exerting caution is imperative.

The first is illustrated in the above story. Talking about candidates in public may cause undue vulnerability. While this may seem obvious to ERE readers, it may be so obvious that we forget our clients often need cautionary reminders. External to the company, someone from the press, the candidate’s current staff, their boss, a customer, or a variety of other interested parties could be within ear shot. Regardless of the motivations, many categories of eavesdroppers could benefit by exposing the candidate’s employment discussions. More than likely, that exposure would damage the candidate’s relationship within their current employer and adversely impact their career within that company.

There’s risk within hiring entities as well. One time, an employee within a hiring organization was friends with one of the external candidates. The current employee learned of a competing external candidate through the hiring executive’s imprudence and leaked that candidacy to the press. The exposure caused the individual to withdraw from the search; the friend lost a competitor, and the hiring executive lost his lead prospect.

The second and third areas of risk have to do with visibility of candidates’ resumes. Companies often make the mistake of putting executive candidate resumes in applicant tracking systems. Once a resume is in an ATS, it is visible to a host of people: human resources, hiring managers, varieties of recruiters. Rarely do these constituents understand or remember the sensitivities typical of passive executive candidates. I have known staff recruiters to call the office of an executive whose resume they found in their system, and announce to the receptionist that they have the executive’s resume and would like to discuss a job opportunity with him or her. These risks can be mitigated by tracking executive recruiting activity within a separate, restricted-access system; there are several specific to the profession that serve our needs better than traditional ATSs.

Third, limit the distribution of executive candidates’ resumes. Too often, when debriefing after a series of interviews, I learn that candidates saw the resumes of competitors on the interviewer’s desk. When feasible, distribute biographies instead of resumes during the search process — they do not scream “candidate” as loudly. Additionally, when sharing executive resumes, remove names and contact information. Not only does it add a layer of anonymity, but it also hinders others from calling the candidates without your knowledge.

The final two areas of caution have to do with visibility of candidates during the interview process. If your company requires visitors to sign a guest ledger, work with the receptionist or security to ensure that each of your candidates signs a blank ledger which is then removed from the stack of other sign-in sheets. This is especially important if you have multiple candidates interviewing for the same job on the same day. Further, limit your candidates’ time in the reception area. Otherwise, subsequent visitors may see your candidate’s sign-in. Additionally, I’ve known employees to scan visitor sign-ins to glean company intel; segregating executive candidate visitor registrations limits exposure to others both internally and externally.

Lastly, limit your candidates’ vulnerability during interviews. Refrain from hosting their meals in the company cafeteria or the company’s favorite nearby restaurant. Also, instead of having candidates move from one interview to another, keep them stationary (in a room that has opaque walls and doors) while your interviewers go to the candidates. This limits the candidates’ visibility to other employees in your company hallways. Also, if you are interviewing more than one candidate for the same search on the same day, make sure the interviews are in different areas, and the candidates use different dining and comfort facilities. Further, if they are overnighting, house them in separate hotels and recommend different restaurants to them. Each of these cautions will decrease the likelihood that your candidates encounter each other during your interview processes.

The bottom line is that you never know who knows who, you never know who is listening or watching, and you never know who is friend or foe with accordant agendas within the political and competitive realms of corporations. Exercising these basic cautions will help protect your reputation as well as those of your candidates’ and their interest in continued engagement with your company.

He wants to work for the company so much he’s launched a silly, almost ridiculous “Hire M.E.” campaign in which a phony mustache plays a supporting role.

A self-described product marketer and digital strategist, Epstein’s got a video, a website with the pleading address GooglePleaseHire.me, a presence on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube, and all sorts of publicity.

And now he has at least a foot in the door with Google recruiting. He tweeted to his 2,177 followers this morning that he had a first conversation with a Google recruiter: “Call w Google went smashingly! Contacting me back EOD. The irony? Microsoft unexpectedly called me 5 min before that call.”

It’s all pretty impressive for a guy whose “About me” page opens with a huge picture of him in boxers, seated in flowery wingback chair with the headline:

Armed only with a mustache and online marketing savvy, one man has set forth on an epic quest to land a job at Google. Follow me and join my journey.

Follow him on Twitter or on his blog and see what happens.

Would you hire Matt Epstein?Incidentally, Epstein does have marketing creds. And silly as it may be, the campaign is working. So would you give him a shot at a job? Vote in our poll. It’s just for fun, but you can see what you and your colleagues would do.

Not those qualifications on a business card that made the rounds of networking events a few years ago, but a resume reduced to 140 characters.

Ever since China’s leading micro-blogging site weibo.com launched a jobs service in late March, 140-character resume summaries have mushroomed. One count in May put the number at 17,000.

Graduating students were the earliest adopters of the micro-resume, sending brief messages noting their academic degree, interest, and experience. Other job seekers have also begun to take to the micro-resume. A  Xinhua article quotes a senior manager who posted his own micro-resume praising their  efficiency.

Recruiters are also taking to the service, broadcasting micro-job posts to the site. On the home page of  the Sina recruiting site are company profiles for Manpower, Panasonic, and Alipay, China’s equivalent of PayPal, among others.

The site also lists the 10 most popular micro-resumes, selected, presumably, on the basis of the number of forwards. (Retweet they would be called, if on Twitter, which, incidentally, is banned in China.)

If you take a look at the micro-resumes, you’ll immediately notice that Google’s English translation (pictured above) runs much longer than 140 characters. That’s where language makes a difference and may keep the micro-resume from gaining much popularity in that part of the world that uses the Latin alphabet.

China’s alphabet allows users to convey far more information in 140 characters than does English.

That hasn’t stopped recruiters in the U.S. and Europe from tweeting job postings to their followers. Typically, these are two or three word descriptions with a link to the full post. Occasionally, Twitter using job seekers will do the same, with a link to an online resume or LinkedIn address.

Once tweeted, however, these jobs and resume pointers descend down a follower’s list, disappearing with a rapidity dictated by how many Twitter connections a person has. Sina’s micro-blogging job service works differently, indexing and highlighting jobs and resumes. Instead of sorting things the way Twitter does — by a chaotic system of hashtags — Sina created a separate site for the recruiting service.

Whether the micro-resume has legs even in China remains to be seen. The Xinhua report quotes one HR director who has doubts:

Wang Dong, a human resources director working for an online advertising company, says that he is very cautious when dealing with microresumes. He believes that they aren’t long enough to provide a suitable introduction for employers.

“Microresumes aren’t necessarily suitable for every industry,” Wang says. “Advertisers and media companies are the most suitable targets for this kind of recruitment.”

Three months after applying to the last of the 100 Best Companies to Work For, Santa has no idea if the job has been filled at 78 of them. He doesn’t even  know if 25 of them got his resume.

Applying under his given name, Chris Kringle (Anglicized from the original German), the jolly old guy was looking for a job as a systems engineer in logistics or product security.

With his uncanny ability to know who has been naughty or nice, and to manage overnight global delivery of billions of packages, Kringle should be a shoo-in for every recruiter’s short list. And even though he got turned down by 22 of the 100 companies, a few recruiters did call him up for a phone screen.

So you can imagine their embarrassment when Mark Mehler, principal in the recruiting consultancy CareerXroads, pointed out that Chris Kringle is another name for Santa.

“I would say, ‘Would you please read the bottom of the resume’.” And there it was, the disclaimer: “This is a CareerXroads Mystery Job Seeker.”

“Obviously,” says Mehler, “They hadn’t read the resume.” There were other tip-offs. Chris’s resume says he once worked for the CIA at the North Pole where he “analyzed coded messages from around the world from children asking for holiday gifts.”

Over the 10 years that Mehler and his partner, Gerry Crispin, have done this survey, they’ve created resumes for Ted E. Baer, Gold E. Locks, and, last year, for environmental technician Jack Coostow.

While the names are all in fun, the exercise has a serious purpose: To survey the responsiveness of companies to their job applicants.

“Our objective is to see how the job seeker is treated,” explains Mehler. “If these are the 100 best companies to work for in the U.S., they should understand how to treat the job seeker.”

“You would think,” he adds. And in so many ways, you would be wrong.

Not only did companies fail to acknowledge receiving an application, but the process itself was so arduous that one of the volunteers helping submit applications said it was almost impossible to do more than a handful a day.

“It’s just amazing what we find when we do this,” Mehler says. “And these are the best companies.”

Many companies had pre-screening questions. One had 144 multiple-choice questions that had to be completed before an application could be submitted.

Other companies had online forms that had to be filled out, in addition to uploading a resume. “Point, click, upload, and go,” Mehler says, is the ideal candidate experience. Few were set-up to do that.

Like the fictitious Chris Kringle, real candidates want acknowledgement of their application and to know when the job has been filled. A survey of candidates by Shaker Consulting Group showed they valued both of those communications more highly than anything other than knowing when they can expect to hear.

To recognize companies that do the best job of meeting candidate expectations, and to spur others to improve their application process, a group of recruiting professionals have created The Candidate Experience Awards.

Sparked by a suggestion from Chris Forman, CEO of Startwire and former head of Airs, now a part of The RightThing, a group of recruiting professionals formed The Talent Board, a non-profit specifically to produce the awards. Its mission “is to facilitate the evolution of the employment candidate experience principally through the annual production of The Candidate Experience Awards.”

Employers of every size and from any industry can participate. The first step is a 40-question application that not only provides the basis for the initial screening, but will allow applicants to see how they compare to other companies.

The competition FAQs say, “Each applicant will, at a minimum, receive specific survey feedback on how they compare to the applicant group. In other words, each applicant will get specific feedback on how they can improve their candidate experience.”

Only the winners will be publicly identified, and recognized during a ceremony at the HR Tech show this fall in Las Vegas. Others remain anonymous. There’s no cost to enter. The deadline is June 30.

Just how hard is it to have the ATS send an auto-response at least acknowledging the application. (Answer: Not hard. No ATS? Set up an auto-response via your email program.)

I don’t hear from a lot of job seekers, but when I do, it is almost always about the application black hole.

No wonder then, that the seeker-centric startup StartWire introduced today an application update feature as the centerpiece of its first update since launching in January.

For more than 1,700 employers, applicants will be able to find out, at a minimum, whether or not they got the job. For some employers, those who have turned on the applicant self-service features of their ATS, StartWire will offer more detailed status updates.

“The one thing we will absolutely be able to get is that they didn’t get the job,” says Christian Forman, CEO and founder. “That should be some improvement.”

For sure it is. And it won’t hurt that StartWire flags the jobs where updates are provided. Two comparable jobs. One has the update icon. The other does not. To which do you apply first?

Gerry Crispin, who has been making the candidate experience a cause celebre for the industry, gave the StartWire application update kudos in a blog post today. He also cited some of the other StartWire v.2 features, such as how it enables users to create multiple communities for job search networking.

If you tinkered with the initial version, you might not even notice some of the updates. Forman kidded about the “peas and Jello” improvements to StartWire, a reference to how he used to hide peas in the dessert to get his kids to eat their vegetables.

In version 2, Forman and his partner Tim McKegney, both of them alums from AIRS, rejiggered the page configuration to bring jobs to forefront. The “Ask the Expert” feature is now tied directly to jobs, with suggestions on the kinds of questions an applicant might consider asking.

(Ask the Expert is a Q&A feature that gives users customized, individualized responses from professional recruiters.)

A less-subtle change is that users can create multiple networks, talking to individuals one-to-one without public status updates. Or, of course, they can choose to go the public route. But in all cases, only the friends and contacts job seekers designate get to participate.

Forman walked me through the changes last week, and as he did so, it was pretty clear how much thought and research he and McKegney put into the changes they made. Remarkable at least to me was the Forman had conversations (email or otherwise) with 300 or so users, asking them all sorts of questions about how they use StartWire and what they wanted out of it.

Networking is important, Forman agreed, so StartWire tells a user who in their network works at an employer they’re interested in. “They decide if they want to contact that person and how they want to make that contact,” said Forman. “That’s peas in the Jello.”

Monster and CareerBuilder have tried to address the issue of the applicant black hole and to increase the transparency into the whole application process.

Apply through them to one of their advertisers and you can at least learn your application was delivered. A few years back, Monster began offering an expanded “Apply History” that tracks an application’s status — when possible, of course. Applicants can also compare their qualifications to others who applied using a Monster resume.

CareerBuilder has an even more extensive service. hireINSIDER gives applicants a fair amount of information about the numbers and qualifications of other applicants.

Despite their efforts, here we are in 2011, still arguing over whether even acknowledging a resume is a good idea. It has taken a Presidential order for the government to do that. So it’s refreshing to see StartWire make an effort to snatch some light back from the black hole.

I posted about this a week ago, as word was leaking out that Indeed was conducting a private beta test. Indeed CEO Paul Forster confirmed the test, but didn’t offer many details then.

Now, what we see is a broadening job seeker service. Users create an account (if they don’t already have one) on Indeed where they can build a resume or upload one.  The resume can be shared by making them public, or they can remain hidden and used only by the job seeker.

Public resumes are searchable on the site or via search engines. That makes Indeed resumes much more visible than the leading other public resume site, Craigslist. It’s also a significant improvement over Craigslist’s resumes, which can charitably only be described as free-form and clunky. Indeed’s resume builder creates the kind of resume any ATS can read.

Since the service is in beta and just launched, it’s going to be a while before Indeed has enough of a resume volume to be a significant recruiting source. But with more than 13 million unique monthly visitors and a promo on every page, Indeed’s resume potential is palpable.

I’ve heard from a couple job board operators since the original post about this, and they’re wary of what the future holds. The two run small job boards, one of which has no resumes. Both upload their listings daily to Indeed and its competitor, SimplyHired, which send them a significant amount of traffic. Google, too, is a player, though not as strong.

Both worry about the possibility of being disenfranchised by the search sites, a worry only fueled by the resume beta launch.

Last week I asked both Monster and CareerBuilder if the test altered their relationship with Indeed. (Job listings from both sites are indexed by the search sites.) And I asked if they regarded Indeed as a potential competitor.

Not surprisingly, I didn’t hear from either of them. I would be surprised, though, if they, too, weren’t wary of the evolution of the vertical search sites. Starting from zero six years ago, Indeed and SimplyHired are now No. 3 and 4 in total U.S. traffic.

At Monster and CareerBuilder, job posting fees are only a portion of their revenue. More than a third comes from resume searching. With the recession forcing all recruiters to become more creative and efficient in sourcing — a trend not likely to be reversed even in an improving economy — a free source of resumes will be a magnet, drawing in recruiters. If they find quality, and enough of a volume, it will become harder and harder to justify paying to search a database.

There’s no danger of that happening anytime soon. But, as a veteran of the newspaper industry’s disenfranchisement by the Internet, I see the parallels. SimplyHired and Indeed, besides free distribution of employer job posts, also offer pay-per-click premium positioning. That’s not something the major job boards have embraced. Yet it is something recruiters are testing, and, ironically, so are the job boards — but as customers of SimplyHired and Indeed!

When I emailed Indeed’s CEO about how his resume service might affect the relationship, Forster downplayed the effect.

“I’m not aware of any feedback from job boards on this,” Forster wrote me. “We have always seen job boards as partners and don’t see that changing for any reason.”

It’s a curious, and complex partnership, though. With both sites sending millions of job seekers to employer career sites and job boards, not posting to SimplyHired and Indeed is no option for most. Yet, that’s the very content that drives the traffic. Free public resumes ups the stakes.

Now add LinkedIn and its growing recruitment-based services and revenue to this mix, and it becomes evident that the recruitment advertising business is facing its own global climate change.

“We have been beta testing allowing users to upload their resume,” Indeed CEO Paul Forster said in an email. “That is all I can say at this point.”

Jason Davis of RecruitingBlogs.com first tweeted the news this morning.

Until now, Forster’s site, like its competitor SimplyHired.com, has indexed job postings from corporate career sites and job boards, including all the majors. Many of them, in fact, provide a daily feed of their listings, finding the two sites a valuable — and free — source of traffic.

Indeed ranks 3rd in the U.S. in traffic; SimplyHired is 4th. The leaders are CareerBuilder and Monster. However, with 13.1 million unique visitors in January, according to comScore, Indeed had more than twice the traffic of HotJobs, which is now part of Monster.

That makes it a formidable player, although both job search sites have scrupulously avoided head-on competition with traditional job boards. Until now, neither has accepted resumes. And both have stayed away from the usual job board pay-to-post business model, offering a pay-per-click premium service.

As a result, many job boards not only provide their listings to Indeed and SimplyHired, some of them are also among their better customers, buying positions on the sites for select ads to drive traffic.

In response to my question about whether this resume beta test changes the relationship with job boards, Forster commented:

I’m not aware of any feedback from job boards on this. We have always seen job boards as partners and don’t see that changing for any reason. We provide job boards with a lot of free, organic traffic and many of them are sponsoring their jobs with us to drive additional traffic. We also enable job boards to display our sponsored jobs as backfill to their own jobs, which improves the job search experience for their users and generates revenue for them.

But when it comes to working the other direction — that is, sourcing placements and req –, the choices are pretty limited.

Now along comes BrightMove with a tool that turns resume sourcing on its head. Instead of searching for candidates to match a req, BrightMatch goes out and looks for job postings to match candidates you have in house.

How an agency might use BrightMatch is as obvious as it seems.

Say you have a particularly great candidate with unique skills, but no current req in house. With BrightMatch you can search thousands of corporate websites — more than 20,000, says BrightMove COO Mike Brandt — to see if there’s a match.

Find one, pitch the candidate, close the deal.

BrightMatch does the heavy lifting. It will parse the resume, extracting the keywords, then search all the sites or only some — you can set the parameters as narrowly or broadly as necessary.

Staffing agencies can use BrightMatch for a little biz dev well before a contract ends. Take a group of programmers nearing the end of a project. Instead of parsing a single resume, enter the skills they have in common to quickly discover what possibilities are out there. With luck, you might just be able to keep the team intact. Or at least keep some of your programmers working.

The results BrightMatch brings back are ranked and can be filtered automatically or manually. Says Brandt: “We use the concept engine normally for finding resumes to reverse-engineer the skills and related terms in an applicant’s resume. We then use those skills to return a result set by relevance, including geography, automatically.”

It’s a cool tool, especially given this economy where hustling is the minimum necessary to stay in business and the more efficiently you use staff … well, to finish the sentence would be to state the obvious.

BrightMatch is part of the company’s core products, and not available as a stand alone. But, Brandt says he’s thinking about making it available to corporate HR so they could offer it as a consolation prize to their unsuccessful applicants.

Job seekers can do something similar by searching Indeed or SimplyHired or even Google, though without a good Boolean string, Google results could be overwhelming. Which is why I asked Brandt if BrightMove might turn this into an app and sell it to job seekers.

“I don’t see us selling it to seekers. We might give it to them but I/we wouldn’t feel right charging a candidate,” he says.

BrightMove has a more ambitious goal than a single app or tool.

“Our goal long term,” says Brandt, “is to create a full lifecycle for agencies and firms that allows them to find potential jobs, get contacts, and then skill market to those contacts through one interface.”

It’s a worthy goal, particularly if that single search interface includes, as he says, internal databases and external sources, including social networks. Adds Brandt, “Our next versions will have integrations to over 30 social networks, email services, calendar services, and contact sites like Plaxo so that a recruiter can work from one place and still leverage it all.”

I wonder. I wrote the following with the idea that it might help some express some of their challenges through a third-party voice.

I’m a phone sourcer. That means I am paid to find people who hold specific titles or who are doing specific job functions inside (usually) specific companies.

I’ve been doing this a long time.

There are a few things that spell disaster for you as a job seeker.

These are:

Being old

It’s a nasty dirty secret inside recruiting but the fact of the matter is if you’re over 50 – maybe even over 45 – many recruiters aren’t interested. They say they’ll look at you and accept your name in the lists I generate but they’re really not. No kidding.

I know this will bring down a firestorm of disapproval from some of my readers, but the fact remains that ageism is a very real and huge problem in our society.

Face it. Get over it. Do something — talk openly about it here.

Being unemployed

This one translates to “…desperately needs a job.” Whatever you do, try not to be unemployed when you look for another job. This is one of the paramount reasons you should always have your eye and ear open to new opportunities. Women should take special heed to this advice.

As a jobholder do you know how to also be a jobseeker?

Having holes in your resume

Again, girls, listen up. Those five years you took off getting five kids up out of the dirt are going to penalize you when you want to (have to) go back to work. I’m not quite sure what to say to you: this issue is endemic also in our society and contributes to the fact that you only make seventy six cents for every dollar a man makes.

Maybe others can help out here with advice.

A resume that looks like a treatise

Keep it direct. Keep it simple. Use a bullet plan. Most recruiters like that best.

And whatever you do, do not speak about yourself in the third person.

Not being relocatable

Being able to relocate is a huge advantage in today’s job market. So many people are “underwater” in their housing and haven’t had their “come to Jesus” moments of awakening, yet they’re in denial about what’s going on in the housing market and think they’d be better off waiting this thing out.

If you’re one of these, get on with your life. Sell your house and move if you have an opportunity to do so. Don’t wait ‘til you need to move. Put your house on the market NOW and prepare to move if you have any inkling at all that you may need a job in the near future (five years or less).

Not being “warm”

I just heard that the single most important thing to career success is being “warm.” This means knowing how to talk to people in real time, face to face, and being able to engage with them on a human level. If you don’t know — learn how to do the facey-face stuff.

Not being findable

They pay me to find you guys. And some of you just can’t be found because the last time you updated your LinkedIn profile was when you joined three years ago and in the meantime you’ve lost the job you had and you haven’t gone back to let anyone know where you are today.

They’re not mind readers — recruiters, you know.

They like things simple, easy, and fast.

Nowadays, social media sites are beginning to monetize — fast! They’re eliminating last names to get viewers to pay to see you. Yes, there’s a way to find your last name, but most don’t know how to do it or don’t want to take the time to do it.

Many — the great majority — won’t pay (at least yet … it depends how this thing evolves) to see you.

Get smart. Think how to get your contact info into your profiles. Place your e-mail in (use the word “at” instead of the @ symbol for your email) and get your phone number in there for goodness sakes.

Read their Terms of Service. Most don’t want you doing this, so take my advice at your own risk on some sites. But some other sites don’t seem to mind.

Women: listen up again. Your names many times don’t show up on 411.com searches because your phone number is listed under your husband’s name. If you live alone many of you like to use unlisted numbers. This is career suicide these days.

If you’re only using a cell, get it out there linked to your name. Most people don’t know how to find cell numbers. Beware, though — I can see cell phone crawlers accumulating cell phone numbers for distribution lists. Is there a way to block crap calls?

If you have a common name, think to use a middle name or initial. Maiden names might also be considered.

Unwillingness to change direction

If your resume (or profile) reflects that you’re unwilling to do just about anything at just about any pay to get out of the situation you find yourself in as an unemployed jobseeker — forget it. Employers are looking to retool their workforces with workers who are multidimensional and cheap.

These are hard and fast facts of life these days. Get used to it. I don’t care that you have a PhD in fiddle-fooling-around. You’re at risk.

Precisely what I was wondering after reading the TechCrunch Europe post about this site. The answer to the first half is straightforward enough. Talentag is the online equivalent of the afterwork social hour; think of it as what LinkedIn would be if it was more like Facebook and less like, well, less like LinkedIn.

Of course that’s not how the site explains it. The answer there is more of a description of what it does. For instance: “Your co-workers and friends can tag you with words or a badge and they can also vouch (for) a particular role you worked together.”

In other words, it’s a way to create a social CV. Talentag connects to your profiles on other social media and will import your work history and friends lists. Then you can connect to them on Talentag and ask them for feedback, get tagged, and, for grins, award and receive badges.

How useful is this to a recruiter? Probably not a whole lot. You can’t use it for sourcing, since searches are limited to your existing inventory of connections from LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Your Talentag friends are pulled in from Facebook, which aren’t too useful for those of us who use Facebook strictly for fun. It’s a point TechCrunch makes, too.

Vouching might have some usefulness in keeping candidates honest. But the feedback and tags? Probably not even as useful as the list of references a candidate supplies.

That said, the site may well evolve into something recruiters might find helpful. For instance, corporate recruiters with a Facebook page could create a Talentag profile, import those Facebook friends, and invite them to create their own “social CVs,” as TechCrunch calls them.

That’s just one for instance. Right now, it’s a long way to go. Don’t count it out though. TechCrunch says the founders are building in more utility. They are the same folks, by the way, that launched Emp.ly, the social media job posting service.

Even if you are not currently seeking a new role, failing to adequately highlight your achievements is a weakness that can impact you throughout your career. When it comes to performance appraisal, promotion consideration, and even day-to-day work assignment, learning how to influence the perception of you as a performer is key to ensuring that your career reaches the heights you desire.

Over a decade ago, Fast Company magazine dubbed me the “Michael Jordan of hiring,” so if you want to have a resume as powerful and effective as Michael Jordan’s actually is, consider each of the checklist items that follow.

Bolster the Content of Your Resume

While an unusual format may garner a few seconds more of attention, it may also prevent your resume from making it through electronic sorting and filtering tools used by larger corporations, so it is best to focus on what your resume says about you, versus the font, layout, and embellishment used. (This is true for online profiles as well; spending hours adjusting the color pallet and background and only minutes on the content doesn’t facilitate stronger networking.) To maximize your appeal, focus on powerful “selling” points that cover your results, your impact on the organization, your skills and your ability to manage and lead.

For each of the items on the checklist, mentally review your working life, as well as other outside work responsibilities, for experiences/activities that relate to the item. For example, if you are seeking a role that calls for leadership skills, ask yourself how many times you were a leader of a project, a subproject, a team, or even a meeting/event. It does not matter if you were never formally appointed a leader or given a leadership title; if you have successfully led others, you should reference leadership as one of your attributes. Feature leadership terms throughout the content that comprises your resume, including sections covering your experience, education, and extracurricular activities.

Continue through the checklist until each of the factors appears at least once in your resume. When you have reached the end of the checklist, step back and admire all that you have done and accomplished, and can do again in your next job, ad then raise your career goals and expectations!

Thirty “Power Factors” to Bolster the Content of Your Resume

1. Result or accomplishment — everyone wants employees who produce results, so you need to find a way to list every significant result, output, or accomplishment. Your resume should include dozens of performance-related references. (Example: Achieved 100% of ___ rollout project milestones while being first to implement ___ within the division.)
2. Quantify results in dollars — the language of businesses is dollars, so characterizing the dollar impact of your accomplishments on the organization can be a key differentiator. It’s OK to use estimates if you can explain your logic. (Example: implemented changes to the ___ process that resulted in a 32% increase output with no noticeable impact on quality).
3. Skills used — listing the work you did but omitting the array of skills that you need to accomplish that work is a major omission in most resumes. You should never mention a task or accomplishment without highlighting both the technical and people skills required to accomplish it. Start with a list of all the skills that you can find in job descriptions of interest and try to mention each one. (Example: Used root cause analysis to track an emerging issue back to a change that had been overlooked many times and used strong Internet research skills to gather supporting information and build a business case to successfully convince a skeptical manager to address the issue.)
4. Demonstrate the quality of the work — you need to clearly demonstrate that you do high-quality work and that you understand and deliver quality consistently. Whenever you mention the volume of your work, also mention indications of its quality. (Example: Consistently ranked top producer within the division while maintaining the lowest error rate and a 98% customer satisfaction rate.)
5. Awards and honors — mention all recognitions received for outstanding work. Don’t forget shared and team awards, or informal awards created by local managers. Include awards received both in school and on the job. (Example: Awarded employee of the month six times.)
6. Leadership — employees who can lead are always in demand. Mention cases where you led a team or project, even if informally. Highlight challenges addressed and leadership methods used. (Example: Assembled and led a team responsible for developing a plan to expand scope of services provided, overcoming resource limitations, personality conflicts, and communication breakdowns to successfully present the case to the executive committee).
7. Management tools used — even if you were not a manager by title, show that you did use common management tools and processes during your assignments. (Example tools to highlight: team work, quality control, conflict resolution, CRM, time management, process reengineering.)
8. Technology tools — few things are more important these days than the ability to use and understand technology. Look for work examples that demonstrate your ability to learn and leverage emerging technology. (Example: used online groupware to create a project management office providing a common document repository, shared calendar, alerts, and staff assignments for key projects within our division.)
9. Worked with key people — individuals who have the opportunity to work with key people and executives are assumed to be among the best. If you worked for or with a famous individual, highlight them. Also include enough information so that the reader will know their importance. (Example: Was selected by my divisional vice president to serve on a committee led by our CEO to evaluate key customer satisfaction.)
10. Level of innovation — in a rapidly changing world, few things are more important than innovation. List new ideas or innovations you developed, even if the innovation was not implemented. Show that you are an outside-the-box thinker and often among the first to try new things. (Example: Suggested adoption of three new technologies to improve internal productivity, two of which were immediately adopted, yielding a 73% increase in workforce efficiency.)
11. Buzzwords — business people love functional/general business buzzwords, and merely using them reveals that you are current. Buzzwords should be included in descriptions of both your experience and education. (Example: Participated in a 6-Sigma evaluation exercise of our ___ process.)
12. Organization — almost every job requires organization, and if you can bring stability from chaos, you are valuable. Share how you took confusing and chaotic tasks and situations and effectively organized them so that they ran smoothly. (Example: Assumed responsibility for combining project documentation and assignments of seven local offices being consolidated into one regional center of expertise.)
13. Problem identification — if you can identify problems before they become severe, you are quite valuable. List situations where you identified a problem that no one else saw and show them that you thrive in situations where there are lots of problems. (Example: Worked with individuals from four departments to uncover unique situations that led to key customer complaints resulting in significant changes to long-standing customer evaluation and support processes).
14. People management responsibilities — in addition to leadership skills, general people skills are often a differentiator for technical jobs. It is important to highlight any time you helped with training, hiring, supervision, coaching or employee development, even if done rarely and informally. (Example: Assumed responsibility for training team of seven new hires during department leads leave of absence).
15. Financial responsibilities — demonstrating that you were given financial responsibility shows that management trusted you. List any time, even if it was brief, where you managed a budget, were responsible for cash or other major spending decisions (Example: Charged with evaluation and selection of $3.2M worth of new equipment for the ____ project.)
16. Selling capabilities — no matter what your job, the ability to sell ideas and products internally or externally is extremely valuable. Demonstrate that you effectively sold executives, vendors, or owners on new ideas. (Example: Developed arguments for a maintenance proposal that led our vendor to alter the service level agreement and reduce annual maintenance fees by 27%.)
17. Customer service — almost all jobs require some customer service knowledge and skill. Even if you were not in a customer service role, demonstrate that you have relevant customer service skills that apply across many situations. (Example: Worked with several colleagues following assignment of a new manager with a very abrupt management style to our division to restore positive working atmosphere and resolve assumptions limiting productivity.)
18. Wrote/Presented — anyone that can write reports or who can make important presentations is extremely valuable. Include any time that you were asked to write something or to make a presentation. If the audience included important people or was large, say so. (Example: Selected by my team to develop and present key revisions and changes to product implementation methodologies before 4,000 key customers at our global user conference.)
19. Planning/Forecasting — employees who are forward-looking are the most desirable. Highlight situations where you forecasted future events or put together a plan, even if informal. (Example: Developed an emergency response plan following news that a court judgment on a highly publicized case would be announced in a building adjacent to ours during business hours. The plan was later used as a template for disaster planning across the company.)
20. Goal-setting — the best employees are goal-oriented. Show that before you start a major project, that you set, communicate, and get agreement on goals. (Example: Worked with team members to clarify and set feasible project goals on the ___ project that resulted in avoidance of four possible project derailers.)\
21. Time management — you need to demonstrate that you are conscious of time limitations and deadlines. Show that you completed work in a timely manner or even that you were the first to do it. (Example: Was the first within my division to complete all milestones on time.)
22. Efficiency — everyone needs workers who are efficient and conscious of costs. Whenever possible, show that you completed tasks efficiently and under budget. (Example: Successfully implemented ____ using only a fraction of the support budget allocated, reducing project cost by 9%.)
23. Extensive contacts — being well connected and having extensive contacts is an extremely valuable asset for any individual. Demonstrate that you used your contacts to get access, answers, or information. (Example: Leveraged industry contacts to get unbiased feedback on two service providers being considered for a long-term contract, uncovering a volume of pending complaints and possible litigation against our leading contender.)
24. Any major company names involved — in addition to mentioning the names of key individuals, you should also mention the names of well-known and innovative firms you have dealt with including notable customers, strategic partners, vendors, or consultants. (Example: Worked with McKinsey & Co. on the deployment of our groups product with Google, General Mills, and Dow Corning.)
25. Global perspective — almost every employee is expected to have a global perspective these days. Even if you don’t have formal international responsibilities, show that you have the capability of working with those from other countries. (Example: Partnered with colleagues in China and India to localize customer evaluation and ranking processes developed there and slated for global rollout.)
26. Benchmarking — the ability to capture information and answers from industry leading firms is extremely valuable. Highlight situations where you researched benchmark best practices both inside and outside of the organization (Example: Compiled summary of best practices in rapid skill development among professional service firms such as Accenture, Deloitte, and EY.)
27. Used metrics — you can’t continually improve anything without metrics. Provide examples that demonstrate you start projects with clearly articulated results metrics in place and that you leverage the metrics to inform decisions. (Example: Devised customer service satisfaction and service efficiency metrics prior to the rollout of new CRM software that would later be used to optimize service center staffing levels.)
28. Consulted — if you have had the opportunity to provide technical or functional advice to others, formally or informally, you are viewed as an expert. Highlight where you consulted or advised others internally or externally. (Example: Consulted with several key clients to transfer knowledge on our approach to learning collaboratively using social media.)
29. Training — in many companies, access to advanced training means that you are a top employee. Highlight training courses, seminars, workshops and any-advanced training on emerging issues that you participated in. If you have taught training classes, even if they were informal, include that also. Under your education, be sure and list any key skills and tools that you learned and “hot topics” covered in your classes. (Example: Represented my division at industry working groups on ___, and then developed informal internal knowledge sharing summaries for others in my group.)
30. Diversity — show that you can work with and understand people from different backgrounds. (Example: Used my knowledge of Spanish and Italian to assist global customers when translated support materials were not available.)

Supplemental Convincing Factors

The following elements can and should be used within any resume point to make it stronger and more convincing.

A comparison number — numbers are powerful, but to an outsider, a single isolated number might not mean much. As a result, it is always a good idea to provide a comparison number to show context. Comparison numbers can include the very best in the industry, the best number inside the firm, the average number, last year’s number, the target number, or your competitor’s number (Example: Broke previous sales records by selling 13 additional units on average, per period, and producing revenue 146% above average in our industry.)

Quotes are included — a direct quote from an executive, supervisor, coworker, or even a customer can add credibility and perspective to any accomplishment. (Examples: Was highlighted in my manager’s annual departmental performance review to senior leaders and the “most valuable” team player).

Killer phrases are used — there are certain phrases in business that are universally accepted as signs of good work. Wherever possible include phrases like … “cut costs by xx%,” “completed the project under time and under budget,” “used technology to improve customer service,” “did more with less,” “increased market share by xx%,” “increased margins by xx %.”

A web link — resumes contain only words, and sometimes your actual work is your most powerful selling point. Wherever possible, provide a direct Internet link to your work or reference to your work. In other cases, mention where a sample or a video of it is available.

Final Thoughts

As both an adviser to talent managers and a business school professor, I get to see both sides of the job search picture. I understand how corporations screen resumes and what it takes to be consistently selected for an interview. Students and experienced professionals alike struggle to present themselves optimally because they rely on antiquated career guidance and assumptions about what others will value.

The one universal truth about resumes is that if it does little more than list your jobs, it provides little value to you or the organizations you apply to. A resume should be a comprehensive marketing document detailing your capabilities, skills, and accomplishments. It should be kept current and used not only when seeking employment, but also as a memory jogger when filing for an internal transfer, promotion, or completing a performance self-assessment. To ensure you are not underselling yourself, use the search feature in your word processing program to see how many times the factors highlighted in this checklist actually appear. If you find, as most do, that over half of these words are not present, kick yourself in the butt for underselling yourself for all these years!

Over the last few days, Gawker reported that the financially troubled, but oh-so-hip firm has a hiring and promotion policy that has more to do with high cheekbones than it does with almost anything else. For instance, Gawker wrote about a “full body head to toe” photo requirement for employee referrals, espoused during a manager conference call in May.

A follow-up article, based, Gawker said, on internal documents and photos, offered a closer look at just what the company wanted in the way of candidate photo submissions. An accompanying extract, presumably from one of the documents, offers such detailed photo instructions as “Include a close-up of face…” and “We need to clearly see everyone’s hair, color length, and style.”

I’ve been careful to punctuate the quotes just as they are in the Gawker illustration. A comma after the word “color” in that last excerpt could open American Apparel to a world of (legal) hurt. But unless these photos are used to discriminate against a protected class, there’s no Title VII problem. And to date, being only of normal attractiveness is not a disability. (Though being tall is worth about $789 an inch per year, University of Florida researchers found.)

Even so, American Apparel posted a denial Monday of the Gawker stories. Says the company:

“American Apparel does not hire or retain applicants based on ‘beauty.’ Our main priority is finding people with a strong sense of style who can inspire customers as they make selections from our extensive line. This is an integral part of the job, and we look for people who will enjoy it as a creative outlet. It has never been the policy of American Apparel, as some blogs claim, to fire employees who are not “good looking” or any of the other accusations implied by the anonymous or unverified third party sources.”

American Apparel’s career site requires wannabe retail store workers to submit the head-to-toe photo and a letter of interest. It pointedly says that a resume is optional. No pictures required for IT positions.

Whatever the purpose of the photos is at corporate, the rank and file wrote in to Gawker, convinced only the attractive and fashionable need apply. “These [biases] based on attractiveness are 100% accurate,” wrote one.  Another, described as a former manager, detailed a “class photo” request:

“We were asked to take class photo’s (sic) constantly. In one instance we received a mysterious phone call from a girl who would not give her exact position, but said she had heard that we were doing poorly and found us some recruits. We were then forced to send in a class photo immediately (so that she could assess the alleged ugly employee situation ). Only three of us were working, including myself, and the photo was sent in within five minutes. A few minutes later we got a call back saying “well you guys look great, I thought you had a staffing issue over there.” Basically implying that the only plausible reason for not making sales is being unattractive.”

There were also comments on the company’s grooming standards, which include such details as avoiding wearing even some of the company’s own clothes. With the company moving in a “more sophisticated, expensive, classy direction,” according to what Gawker says are internal documents, employees were counseled to wear only “The New Standard.” Anything else, though it may still be in the stores and for sale, shouldn’t be worn because “it wrecks the image American Apparel is trying to portray.”

Other rules included the types of footwear “that shouldn’t be worn.” On the list are Keds, Converse, Vans, and “doc Martins” (sic).

A few days later, Gawker posted what it said were emails from Katherine Johnson spelling out grooming rules for men and women. Johnson’s LinkedIn profile identifies her only as “management” at AA.

Among other things, men should avoid excessive hair product, keep facial hair clean and groomed, and wear belts with pants that have loops. Women, she wrote, should wear minimal makeup, keep their hair its natural color, not wear distracting jewelry, and so on. The email guidelines are eminently reasonable — perhaps not for Silicon Valley, where style is geek-influenced.

However, if the photo examples attached to the emails weren’t a joke, then reasonableness is out the window. The photo here supposedly was attached to the email detailing the guidelines for women.

Banker Debrahlee Lorenzana (who is suing Citigroup which fired her, she says, for being too attractive and fashionable) should have sent in a photo. She might have been hired as the CFO.

Curiously, men are permitted to wear the previously forbidden Keds; clean, white, but Keds nonetheless.

American Apparel has had a history of employee relations issues. It has been lauded for its “Made in the USA” operations and its pay, at $13 an hour with benefits, is high by garment worker standards. On the other hand, the company and its CEO Dov Charney have been sued multiple time for sexual harassment. They’ve never lost, but odd things have happened. A couple cases were settled. One, though, had such peculiar terms attached to it that a Court of Appeals essentially threw the whole thing out.

In defending the company, Charney’s attorneys wrote in a court filing, “American Apparel is a sexually charged workplace where employees of both genders deal with sexual conduct, speech and images as part of their jobs.”

Several years ago, during an interview, he had oral sex with an employee in front of a reporter from Jane magazine.

Lets take a quick look at the facts:

• Resumes are highly subjective, and there is a lack of standardization for the information they present
• Resumes are loaded with embellishments and misinformation
• Resumes are hard to deconstruct in a way that helps facilitate automated matching
• Reviewing resumes causes a serious bottleneck in the hiring process that can tax the bandwidth of hiring personnel as applicant volume increases

Of course, resumes do serve an important function in that they provide hiring personnel with a concise package of valuable information. But the fact that they are a calling card that provides a high-level summary of an applicant’s qualifications means that they end up being used incorrectly. Using a resume as a top-of-the-funnel tool on which to base quick judgments about applicant suitability is a source of major error. The value of the resume lies more in its use as one of many sources of information to be reviewed as one deepens the dialogue with a candidate. For instance, a quick resume review is an excellent way to help one prepare for an interview with a candidate.

I am not alone in my opinions. Over the past decade, many of us have looked for tools that can solve some of the noted problems with resumes and thus serve as a viable replacement. There have been many attempts to provide such tools. At the heart of all these methods is some way to deconstruct the information presented on the resume into a set of searchable, matchable parameters. Some have used parsing technology in which information is evaluated using artificial intelligence. While resume deconstruction methods are a good start, they do not really support the replacement of the resume as a capabilities presentation. These methods are really just quick fixes to something that is fundamentally broken. Anyway, AI and parsing has really have failed to catch on in a way that suggests they represent the future.

A more promising approach to getting around the fundamental flaws of the resume is found in technology that involves a more “live” approach in which applicants are asked to manually enter information into fields that represent key types of information found on a resume (i.e., what skills do you have? How many years of experience do you have?). This essentially asks the candidate to parse apart their resume manually based on parameters that are deemed important by the employer. This type of exercise greatly facilitates the ability to match applicants to job openings in an automated way, effectively replacing the resume’s role as a screening tool. I really believe such methods have value, especially for those using job boards and career sites. These methods are still not a suitable replacement for the resume, as they don’t have the richness of information that a resume does.

So where does this leave us?

Enter web 2.0. The rules are changing again. I had a really great talk a few weeks ago with a friend who works for KODA, an interesting new online job seeker community that really captures the spirit of where we are going. We talked a lot about what her company is doing to build a community in which relevant information flows freely between members and potential employers. She educated me about some of the more subtle ways that new broad-based Internet technologies are changing the way people use the web to find and apply for jobs. I combine this discussion with what I am seeing from other new and interesting companies such as Brazen Careerist, a company based on the idea that social networking can change the way people demonstrate their ability to perform jobs, essentially allowing them to provide factually based capabilities presentations. It is clear to me that deep-seated change is on the horizon.

I am convinced that dynamic, interactive on-line profiles are the replacement for the resume. I bet every single person reading this article has a LinkedIn profile and most probably have a Facebook profile too. Let’s take a LinkedIn profile. It has everything a resume has, and more, including a summary of career history with detailed information about accomplishments at each major node in one’s career, and a thorough overview of skills, experience, and capabilities. The online profile is also a nexus for a web of complex, interrelated information giving it some things that a resume does not and never will have, including:

• The ability to verify information presented via input from other community users. This includes reference checking and testimonials.
• It’s dynamic, allowing the user to update info in real time and allowing for links to other relevant info housed in other places.
• It’s community oriented and allows input and commentary by others whose opinion is relevant.
• It’s flexible in that information can be extracted and tailored for specific purposes (i.e., presenting a skills profile or a summary of one’s work values).
• It provides a much richer way to present accomplishments and relevant information (links to an online portfolio for instance).

So, the online profile provides a venue for all kinds of information that can serve to showcase things that are directly relevant for a given job. As a champion for the use of assessment and a futurist, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the fact that I think online profiles also provide a great opportunity to integrate important information about an applicant into their profile. Adding assessment results to one’s profile provides an opportunity to help summarize and categorize one’s values, traits, skills and abilities, providing employers with even richer information about an applicant while also providing a way for applicants to learn more about themselves. Imagine the ability for others to comment on and verify assessment-related information or for employers to quickly access a baseline of standardized, trait-based information describing a job seeker, and you are glimpsing the future!

If one thinks about the key tennants of web 2.0 it is clear that technology has provided the foundation for the phenomenon of social networking. The interconnectivity and access to relevant information about any subject under the sun that is now at our fingertips represents a new way of doing things in almost all aspects of our lives. Technology has had a “push” effect such that people find new ways to use technology to create new products and ways of getting things done. Once these are “pushed out,” the ones with real value are adopted and quickly gain critical mass based almost entirely on their value proposition to users. Why should we believe that the world of hiring will go against this trend and ignore the value provided by new technology? Trust me: it won’t.

We have a long way to go; there are some limiting factors to consider including:

• Reluctance to change.
• Fighting to become the standard provider. This stuff will work best if one company or venue becomes the standard. This will be a challenge as players jockey for marketshare.
• Job seekers are reluctant to pay extra. Many sites that offer upgraded profiles or extra information for a fee have not faired well. Any model in which the costs are not borne by the employer is doomed.
• Technological limitations. For the profile to really work well we will need technology and products that don’t currently exist. For instance, this model really requires the ability to “scrub” profiles found all over the web and repackage information for specific purposes related to hiring

Social networking and dynamic user profiles are still in their infancy. It wasn’t that long ago that you probably faxed your resume to someone. Twenty years ago the world wide web as we know it didn’t even exist. So, if 20 years from now, profiles haven’t replaced the resume; I will gladly eat my hat!! How old fashioned of me.

Reflecting on my Facebook and LinkedIn experiences got me thinking about the excellent article about Brazen Careerist that recently ran in the ERE Daily and how it is seeking to use social networking to change the way people demonstrate their ability to perform jobs. It was at this point that I had an “aha” moment in which I realized once and for all that Social networking is here to stay.

Forgive me for being a master of the obvious but I think that while many of us are actively using and benefiting from the latest in web technology, a good number of us have yet to fully contemplate the gravity of the changes that are currently going on right under our very noses. To begin comprehending the depths of what is going on, just observe any person under 30 for even a short amount of time and you will realize that connectivity and interconnectivity are becoming firmly woven into the fabric of our modern existence.

I then must ask myself why it has proven so attractive.

The answer lies in the fact that social networking is really the next logical extension of the Internet’s ability to create a level of interconnectedness that has previously been unknown to mankind. I think we can all agree that social networking, while providing tremendous entertainment value, is also popular because it allows us to be more productive and efficient while also serving to help us share knowledge, experiences, and opinions. It is probably not a stretch to assume that we have all grown personally and professionally as a result of social networking.

The next question that popped into my head was “How will social networking impact the use of pre-employment assessment?”

To answer this question, we must first examine the bigger question “How will social networking impact the world of staffing and hiring?” Of course there are many easy and obvious answers to this question, all related to increased interconnectivity and access to information about people and their work-related experiences. Here are some more specific things related to social networking and hiring that I think we can look forward to experiencing in the near future.

Death of the resume as we presently know it: The various elements of a resume are being teased apart and presented in a different format that is based more on profiles and portfolios that follow a standardized format.

Providing a capabilities presentation via the communication of ideas: The ideas that are driving the folks at Brazen Careerist are really interesting to me. The ability to use dialogue and discussion to present one’s capabilities, interests, and knowledge will have value to potential employers.

Creating a transportable, evolving identity that relates to the workplace: The various elements that are presented as part of a social networking profile are continuing to expand and evolve. It seems that we are moving toward standardized profiles that contain a wide range of information about who we are and what we have done. These profiles will grow and change as we do, allowing us a venue to remain highly current and relevant in our presentation of ourselves to others.

Sharing input, information, and opinions from others about work-related issues across moments in time and technology platforms: Social networking is a great way to get third-party information about someone whom you do not know. Relying on opinions and comments from others to build a real picture of the relevance of something or someone is standard for today’s online communities. This already has and will continue to be applied to the hiring paradigm.

The evolution of the concept of a “job.” One of the biggest factors that will continue to impact hiring is the impact that interconnectivity and technology will have on the idea of a “job.” We can expect to see jobs become a short-term proposition, with movement between work “moments” facilitated by the ability to easily and accurately identify persons whose skills and experience can be used to help companies reach specific short-term goals.

Assessment has a role in helping the hiring process evolve along the lines presented above. The overall way I see assessment making a strong contribution is in its ability to help create trait-based virtual identities that capture an individual’s ability to perform specific types of work within a specific environment. Here are some of the ways assessment will contribute to this end:

Replacing resumes with profiles: Matching persons with job opportunities and evaluating them relative to the requirements of a job or project will be greatly facilitated by the creation of profiles that include information provided by assessments. Adding information provided by assessments to one’s online profiles can help provide a more complete view of an individual in terms of their work-related identity. Important factors such as values, traits, personality elements, and interests can be summarized via assessment results that are added to one’s profile. The real key to this advancement lies in the acceptance of a standardization of the work-related information that comprises one’s profile so that one common language can be used to describe everyone. This will allow matching to be highly relevant and accurate while helping provide a standard way to discuss humans and the work we do.

Providing the ability to view a person from multiple external perspectives: In the world of performance management, 360-degree feedback represented a quantum leap. Efficient 360 was just not possible before web-based technology. The ability to collect work relevant information from a variety of sources, all linked via social networks, has already begun to make a difference. The next step will be using standardized assessments to provide all parties with a common, work-related language with which to discuss an individual relative to a specific set of work or environmental requirements.

Demonstrating relevant capabilities in real time: I fully expect there to be an intersection between social networking and gaming that allows individuals to demonstrate their work-related capabilities to potential employers. While sandbox worlds like Second Life may not have made an instant impact in the short run (when is the last time anyone even mentioned Second Life with regard to recruiting?), the rise of avatars doing virtual work is coming. In the short run, I think it is only a matter of time before we see collaborative real-time simulations that tap into traits, skills, and knowledge required for a wide range of jobs and careers. Job simulations have long been one of the most powerful and relevant forms of assessment used to predict job performance and I expect social networking and collaborative gaming to take simulations to the next level.

While some of the things I have mentioned will likely require artificial intelligence that is presently beyond our comprehension, the foundation will still be provided by the science of psychology and its ability to use scientific methods to understand and measure the traits and characteristics required to do a job within a specific environment. As with the evolution of employee selection thus far, an equal blend of technology science will be required. The result will be a much more exciting, dynamic, and relevant dialogue between employer and employee.

Aimed squarely at the young Gen-Yers for whom Brazen Careerist was designed, the social resumes allow these early career professionals to offer hints at their potential. Besides all the usual biographical stuff of a traditional resume, these social resumes provide a home for the professional musings and business ideas of the participant.

The announcement of today’s launch says, “The application helps younger candidates compete more effectively by overcoming an unlevel career playing field that gives preference to years of experience, and helps recruiters discover candidates who are on the verge of becoming stars.”

It’s an ambitious goal, and certainly the site has no shortage of Gen Y careerists eager for a showcase. It has 100,000 updates a month, which includes the robust conversations that take place. How many people that translates into is not a number the site shares, though the 600 percent growth suggests the Brazen Careerist is offering its target demographic what it wants.

But this is a well-trod path, with hundreds of  networks vying for participants and dozens of resume replacement and resume makeover sites launching in just the last few years.

LinkedIn and Facebook represent the establishment social networking sites: LinkedIn for business, and Facebook for fun. Granted, neither offers the same sort of stage for a Gen Y careerist as Trunk’s social resume. But both have a huge head start in traffic and brand recognition.

Then there are the resume-reinvention startups like Personavita and VisualCV. These offer flexible resumes that are more portfolio-oriented than what you’ll see on a LinkedIn.

When I discussed these with Penelope Trunk, I was thinking “How are you going to compete for time and attention?” How old school. Sixty seconds on the phone with her and I realized Brazen Careerist is part of the vanguard in new social media recruiting ideas.

There’s still plenty of room for the experiential resume — it won’t be going away anytime in the forseeable future — but as she made clear, the Brazen Careerist and its social resumes are a better portrait of a 25-30 year old than any single-sheet bio.

“The recruiting industry is shifting from search ninjas to those who understand conversations,” she said.

The social resume is not some standalone document, but a living, changing profile of a person. The conversations the members participate in with their Gen Y peers; how they analyze things, explain themselves, and relate are the ingredients of that social resume.

Finding talent in this environment is different than doing a keyword search on Monster or a Boolean search on Google. “It’s a skill to judge people through their conversation,” Trunk explained. “It’s like an interview in that way.”

The Brazen Careerist is, at heart, a social network for the Gen Y professional. There are niche networks for specific careers, locales, pop culture, and even, or should I say, especially for ideas. Read through a few of the posts and you quickly discover the nature of the conversations are more collaboratively helpful than purely observational.

That’s typical of Gen Yers, says Trunk. “They were raised on teams and teamwork. They’re not like the Baby Boomers where everything is a competition.” She also says that this generation is less into the one-on-one discussions of email, than it is social network conversations, yet another manifestation of its team approach.

There is no consensus about the long term effectiveness of social media recruiting generally. I explore that in depth in the March issue of the Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership. However, there is no doubt that it is a growing trend and almost certainly should be a part of every recruiter’s toolbox.

Today’s young employees grew up with networks as a natural part of their daily experience. So it’s hardly surprising that they are engaged in professional networking on the scale they are.

As Trunk says in today’s press release, “The new workforce is about knowledge management. So you had better be known for your ideas, otherwise no one will know why they should hire you.”