Historically, the resume is the recruiter’s Number One tool, his first point of contact with candidates. But other solutions are appearing more and more. Although this document is not (yet!) obsolete, learning to do without it can leave you open to interesting profiles that would not have reached you by this conventional route.
The drawbacks of the resume
The resume has four major drawbacks. First of all, it forces summarizing in one or two pages a career than can sometimes be complex, composed of more or less consistent career paths, and therefore does not necessarily give a good view of the career and its author’s goals.
Secondly, even though the overview of knowledge is useful, it says nothing about the person’s interpersonal skills, values and ability to integrate into your company
In addition, by requiring a specific degree or level of experience, you will be missing out on people who may have the required skills but have just not had them confirmed by the usual means and people who could let you diversify your workforce.
Finally, candidates may lie, or at least embellish, and despite checks you could end up with a new employee who does not have the necessary skills to carry out their duties.
Is your company ready to get around these obstacles by eliminating the resume? You can try experimenting, at least for a few positions, and see how it goes.
The social media alternative
These powerful tools can help you find potential employees. Social media such as LinkedIn contain all the information that would be shown on a resume, as well as much more, with the candidate’s various activities on the network, their public interactions with other members, recommendations, etc. You can get to know him better than through the resume and get a better idea of his personality, in addition to his skills.
It may take more time, but if candidates uncovered in this way are better, the investment may be worthwhile! It is also a good way to reach people who are not actively looking for a job and therefore don’t necessarily have a resume to send you, but who could be open to a new opportunity.
Other options
One way to learn how to do without resumes is to do a simulation. It is easier to set up for some jobs than for others, but is applicable in most cases. For pre-selection, have a form to be filled out on your website, then put your future employee in a work situation and see how they manage it. For example, for role-playing for a sales position, play the role of the customer and ask the candidate to sell you your own products. For a manager, have him settle a conflict between two of your employees. For technical positions, you just have to have him use the machine he will use or test him on the actions he will have to perform every day. In this way, you will quickly assess his abilities to hold the job.
Another option is to arrange online contests. For example, for developers create a simple program, and offer a job to the person who creates it the fastest. Or again, for communications positions, write a press release on a subject and keep the one that appears to you to be the most relevant.
The benefit of this initiatives is that they will help you get to know them better… And open you to atypical and high performing profiles!