Is The Resume Dead?

In the old days of hiring – and by that we mean a few years ago – you would advertise a job, get a collection of resumes and cover letters, sort through them and bring in the best two or three for an interview. Or, you would hire a recruiter for a sizeable fee, have them build the candidate pool and do some screenings and they would give you a few people to bring in for a real interview.

Well, that system is quickly going the way of the Dodo Bird, and for good reason. The fact is you can gain a lot more information about a candidate much easier than ever before. No longer are hiring decisions based around a resume and a cover letter – which at worse could be gamed, and at best are rarely a reflection of the candidate – and instead on gaining insights through a variety of other means.

It isn’t that the resume and cover letter should be completely eliminated. Instead, they should be used as just another tool in the toolbox, instead of the main focus of the initial screening process.

So what are the other tools you should be using and how? They are:

No surprise here and, frankly, you’re probably doing this already. The key though is to know what to look for, as a recent study showed that if a candidate posts pictures of themselves drinking alcohol on Facebook, for example, it does not mean they are necessarily a bad fit. But certainly everything a person posts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and whatever else is fair game.

The advantage of social media? It gives some insights into the size of candidates’ networks – something particularly important for jobs like sales – and how they work with others. If someone is prone to Twitter outbursts and Facebook rants, there is a good chance they’ll be equally difficult to work with in-person.

2. Software Programs Like VoiceGlance

Breaking news: technology can make our lives easier, and that includes the hiring process. A system likeVoiceGlance – which can quickly screen candidates for you – is a great way to gain powerful insights into a candidate beyond what is available in a resume. The advantage here is it allows you to quickly understand the competencies and mindset of an applicant, which allows you to both screen out the wrong candidates and have more meaningful interviews with the right ones.

3.       Google

Nearly all of you are going to Google search a person’s name before you hire them, and for good reason. Beyond just the scandalous – i.e. to see if an applicant was in the police blotter – there is some substance as well. You can see if a candidate has a website or a blog or what articles or publications they might have been involved in. All of that information is often more telling than a resume, because it shows what they really have done, instead of how they’d like to be perceived.

Conclusion: The headline is perhaps overly dramatic, but the fact is that far more channels can be used to screen candidates, and they should be used. Like we wrote in the last paragraph, a resume and a cover letter is how a candidate perceives themselves. These other channels help reveal who a candidate really is.