Giving Up on the Conventional Resume

From the Wall Street Journal | Feb 9, 2010 | By Brent Humphries

Brent Humphries was a technical project manager at the Iowa Foundation for Medical Care. His position was eliminated in June 2009, after five years with the nonprofit. Previously, he worked as an IT contractor for various financial services companies. Mr. Humphries, 37, earned a part-time MBA from the University of Iowa in 2009. He lives in Des Moines, Iowa.

I just finished the third interview in a week where the interviewer never even looked at my resume. In a world where companies streamline the screening process to the nth degree, personal networks trump everything else, and applicants are little more than a list of keywords. The conventional resume is dead.

In the interests of efficiency, companies seem to be squeezing out almost all of the opportunities for an applicant to creatively differentiate themselves. I recently completed an online application where 95% of the requested fields were marked as mandatory, and almost none of the fields were free-form. In the instructions, the implication was clear that “irregularities” or incomplete data would negatively impact an applicant’s chances of being hired.

So far in my job search, my personal network has proven to be infinitely more useful than my resume has been. For network-derived job leads, I’ve almost always secured at least a first interview; for job leads where my resume is the first contact with the company, it’s just not happening.

Since there is still a glut of job applicants for many positions, companies can continue to require long lists of highly specialized skills and dismiss applicants who don’t have all of them. In this scenario, meeting 100% of the job requirements plus 95% of the preferred skills often means that applying for the job isn’t going to result in getting an interview. Based on my experience, the idea of assessing an applicant from their resume and determining their usefulness to the organization has been replaced with simply counting keywords.

So, what am I doing to move my job search forward in a post-resume world? I’m putting more effort into my resume. Yes, you read that last sentence correctly. I’m using my resume so it helps with my job search as it needs to be today. Writing and re-writing my resume helps to organize my thoughts about my career, helping me to be more prepared in interviews to discuss my experience, credentials, and strengths in a way that highlights how I can help the organization. My resume is also how my network gets me interviews, because a proper resume is still a requirement for most positions and makes it easier for my network to convince a hiring manager that I’m a good candidate for an interview.

A resume is still an opportunity to stand out to the people who read it, even if most “readers” are automated programs that are just counting keywords. One out-of-the-box option someone recently mentioned to me was to send out Valentine’s Day-themed resumes like using red ink on pink paper. Who knows, something so unusual might get my resume the attention it hasn’t garnered lately…I wonder if I should order some of those candy hearts with a custom message on them.

Has the conventional resume become less important in your job search? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.