By Oliver Staley
Resumes are a poor proxy for a human being.
Whether on paper or LinkedIn, they may tell an employer about a job seeker’s experience and credentials, but they’re frustratingly silent about almost everything else. They have virtually nothing to say about a candidate’s personality, or their character, or their ability to persuade and communicate—all soft skills that employers consider essential ingredients for success.
“Resumes are terrible,” says Laszlo Bock, the former head of human resources at Google, where his team received 50,000 resumes a week. “It doesn’t capture the whole person. At best, they tell you what someone has done in the past and not what they’re capable of doing in the future.”
But even as a register of a job candidate’s professional history, a resume is horribly flawed. Its rigid format organizes a life’s experiences into bite-sized units designed for the consumption of hiring managers, or—increasingly—scanning software.
Resumes force job seekers to contort their work and life history into corporately acceptable versions of their actual selves, to better conform to the employer’s expectation of the ideal candidate. Unusual or idiosyncratic careers complicate resumes. Gaps between jobs need to be accounted for. Skills and abilities learned outside of formal work or education aren’t easily explained. Employers may say they’re looking for job seekers to distinguish themselves, but the resume requires them to shed their distinguishing characteristics.
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