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My experience with most resumés is that they don't work very well. For the person writing their resumé it's hard to get across the depth and breadth of their life experience and character - most resumés read like a travel itinerary rather than, say, a eulogy. From an employer's perspective, resumés tell you very little - it really takes a face-to-face interview to learn about a candidate and assess their suitability for a position.
This strikes me as wasteful and misleading. For instance, I personally have plenty of desirable qualities and experience as a prospective employee, I'm pretty good at selling and not half bad at writing, yet whenever I try to write a resumé for myself using the usual structure I end up coming across as an unstable, indecisive serial underachiever. I certainly wouldn't give myself an interview. My experience as an employer in selecting people to interview and subsequently hire from their resumés seems to suggest I'm not the only one whose resumé isn't a true reflection of themselves.
So what to do? I propose a different kind of resumé, one that better reflects a person's full life experience and character rather than just a list of where they've been. After all, in a work environment that increasingly demands multiple skills and certain intangible qualities, an employer's focus is more likely to be on a candidate's accumulated wisdom and expertise than any individual achievement. My preferred resumé format would aim to map the candidate's life from three different viewpoints - discipline, timeline and personality.
The discipline projection would group achievements, education, experience and interests by discipline. This would give the reader a thorough and immediate insight into where the candidate's strengths and passions lie, in a broad 'whole-of-life' context.
The timeline projection would map the candidate's life progression by time, providing rich insight into which events have shaped and influenced the candidate's life, constructing a narrative and better informing the reader of the candidate's motivation and life experience.
Instead of simply stating the same old schtick about working well independently and as part of a team, coping well under pressure, having great time management and self-motivation etc etc, the personality projection would detail specific examples of events that have demonstrated various personal qualities. Displayed in groups by skill or attribute, this would pre-empt the usual interview questions asking for examples of when the candidate did such and such.
Taken individually or combined, these three projections would provide a much richer insight into a candidate's overall experience, motivation and state of mind than the usual dry summary. Such an insight would entice employers to explore further in a face-to-face interview, allowing more personalised and probing questions which would in turn result in better recruitment.
Recruitment firms try to do all of this already of course, but in my experience the 'recruitment process' is grossly impersonal and feels like being part of a scientific experiment. The aim is to process large groups of people using standardised activities and then match people to positions in many cases without the employer even being involved. To me that is just turning labour into a commodity that can be purchased using a tick and flick sheet. I propose making recruitment more personalised, not less. Our individual experiences, passions and personalities are what truly drive us. That's what recruitment should be based on, for the benefit of employers, employees and customers.
What do you think?
To test my proposal, I will put together a new resumé for myself using the format I've described and post it on my website. I'll then use it to attempt to find a job. Stay tuned...
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