Resume, Nevermore
This post has a bit of background that will add a Tuesday-esque sense of irony.
In the months after leaving the office life and before starting to work contract, I enjoyed a lot of leisure time. To keep things interesting and earn a few bucks here and there, I’d sometimes ply my word processor skills in re-making resumes for friends and friends of friends in the tech industry. While short-lived, the experiences tuned me into some very different, and often dismaying attitudes towards resumes.
Having been involved in recruiting for various projects, I’ve also had the chance to see the other side of the resume life-cycle. Slogging through the massive amounts of detail that resumes typically present, and comparing applicants on such detailed grounds takes up a lot of time and glucose. It’s not fun, and really doesn’t seem compatible with how we cognitively make first cuts with such abstract criteria. So at some point last year I decided to take a stand on the next recruitment round I was involved with: no more resumes.
The icon is tongue in cheek; I don’t have a pathological hatred of resumes, but I do find them unhelpful in identifying good candidates. The recruitment ads I’ve been posting these days have a sentence or two that amounts to the following:
Please contact us with a short letter of introduction and links to live, viewable projects you’ve worked on. No resumes, please.
You probably see the irony by now; if not, please get in touch for my one-day Irony Workshop.
The goal of not accepting resumes is to cut through the mass of detail that doesn’t serve the preliminary screening process, and to get around habits of style that have overtaken resume writing and reduce each candidate to a monotone.
What exactly do I get from a letter that I couldn’t from a resume?
- Evidence of communication skills in the form of a spontaneous and directed letter.
- A distillation of the candidate’s skill and experience as they relate to the job posting.
- Preliminary insight into the personality of the person behind the letter, which frames most more hiring decisions that we may realize.
It’s worth adding that I don’t think it’s alright to ruthlessly judge on points of grammar in these letters, at least where I’m not hiring a writer. If the ideas are getting across clearly, I consider the person someone I might be able to work with.
Each letter takes about 5 minutes to read and consider. With less than an hour of reading time we end up with 2-4 very strong candidates. The results? So far, so good: the designers, engineers, writers and assistants found through this method have proven to be well suited to both the technical requirements of the job and the culture of the teams that they joined.
The Resume’s Place
With its focus on details, the resume seems better suited as a supplement to an interview, like a handout for your presentation. If the details are wanted, they should be read in the context of knowing the candidate at a higher level of communication than a mere listing of facts.
Declining resumes won’t work for everyone. The semi-normalized structure that most resumes follow works well for people who need to data-mine and manage thousands of candidates, such as professional recruiters and very large organizations. Also, more mature organizations can have HR policies that make it hard to seek out candidates without a resume screening. That’s unfortunate, but a reality to keep in mind, depending on who you’re hiring for.
I’d be interested in hearing other points of view on this idea. I’m also wondering if there are others who have eschewed the resume as the gatekeeper document in favour of a more relevant and less formal introduction.
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That’s an interesting idea Todd, which I’d like to see spread. I’m not overly fond of resume myself, both from the view as a candidate, and as the person slogging through a stack to find one candidate in fifty worth pursuing. I’m curious as to the differences in the responses sent in reply to the posting. What’s the range of letter length, and what set the interesting folks apart? While I understand that you don’t deduct points for grammar,I’m curious if any of the strong candidates were a bit weak on that front. I ask because in the past I have dropped resumes with poor grammar and/or typos for a few reasons:
* Unlike the background and listed skills, poor usage of grammar and multiple misspellings are easy to spot.
* In this day of ubiquitous spelling and grammar checking tools, it is extremely easy to verify that all is well with one’s writing.
* While I will allow one, or possibly two small errors to pass, the resume and other forms of communication are a window into the candidate’s attention to detail, which is very hard to learn about prior to working directly with a person.
Again, this is a very interesting concept and one that I’ll assign some brain cells to chew on as I go about my day. Thanks for sharing it!
The letters are usually 2-3 paragraphs – pretty short and easy to read. What sets the better ones apart are those that deliver exactly what’s asked for in the ad, such as links to work they’ve done. They also show some personality without losing track of the point of the letter they’re writing.
I’m much more forgiving about grammar and spelling in these letters since we are asking for something to be written on the fly.
Though I get annoyed with spelling and grammar mistakes, and they do reflect some aspect of the person’s way of working, I think they can just happen, too, and I don’t like to toss out a candidate if spelling and grammar aren’t what I’m hiring for. The spontaneous letter seems to tell me more about the personality and ability to respond to a situation than the prepared document, so I’m willing to ignore a lack of sizzle for some real steak.
That makes a lot of sense, thanks for the additional info Todd!