“No pressure, but your résumé has six seconds to make an impression before it is sent to the don’t-even-bother pile,” Kailyn Rhone wrote on 16 April 2023 in the WSJ.
But this is insanity. Are we really going to give a human 6 seconds to differentiate themselves?
Are we going to let ChatGPT or some other #AI garbage decide who’s right for our team?
Are we going to #SEO our #resume?
Hell no. That’s freaking absurd.
As I wrote in a March 1, 2023 post on LinkedIn, the whole damn system is broken as soon as you start boiling people down to resumes.
It’s been broken for decades.
As broken as the college admissions process.
As broken as our society at large.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let me just break it down for you, this better process.
1: Cast a very wide net.
Post your opportunity everywhere. Some of our highest quality hires have come from Craigslist. I’m not joking.
2: Make the application relevant.
Require every applicant to answer 10-15 short, open-ended questions like, “what do you like most about your current job?” and “why are you looking for a change?”
3: Score the answers to each question on a scale of 1-4.
Do it one question at a time, hiding identifying information about the applicant AND hiding the scores they received on the other questions they answered.
4: Filter by highest aggregate score.
You’ll find an odd shape to the statistics: Lots of punters, lots of folks in the middle, and a few stars that are a two standard deviations from the mean.
5: Focus on those stars — you’ll find a great teammate in there, I guarantee it.
Never once should you even glance at a resume.
