When No Resumes Makes For Better Hiring

What is a resume? It’s a marketing document that details your successes in your career. (Some poorly written resumes simply detail assigned tasks, but that’s a topic for another day.) It also tells the recruiter and hiring manager where you went to school and what you studied. Your name is at the top, which can give pretty good insight into your race, gender, and even the socio-economic class in which you were raised.

What happens if you throw all those things out? The Wall Street Journal reports on companies who are doing just that-throwing out the resume and doing something called “blind hiring.” Instead of poring over resumes, they ask candidates to complete tasks, and the hiring manager decides who to interview, based on these tasks. All the manager sees are the results of the projects-not where the person went to school, not the names of the companies where the person previously worked.

To keep reading, click here: When No Resumes Makes For Better Hiring

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9 thoughts on “When No Resumes Makes For Better Hiring

  1. Hi Suzanne, I agree completely with your assessment that “no resume” hires can work well with entry level positions and maybe event techie positions but using it for high level positions is extremely risky. I love the idea of “no resumes” and believe if used properly could mitigate some bad hires and some discrimination. Great article.

  2. Yea, I think this no-resume hiring sounds like a gimmick and a game. Those with true talent aren’t going to play that gimmicky game.

    Many companies today have folks filling an online form that reads the resume and fills in the appropriate fields; so, it should be relatively easy to reprint the resume with “identifying” info removed.

    There is no need to make people perform stunts to prove that they might be a good hire.

    Here’s a even better idea that companies should follow – hire/promote managers who don’t hire based upon superficial info anyway.

  3. charles –

    Properly done, “tasks” are not “stunts”. Stunts are those silly questions people get in interviews that have nothing whatsoever to do with how well they will perform in a job.

    What are your weaknesses? Tell me about a time when you had a problem with a manager? Where do you see yourslef in 5 years? How many firemen are there in the state of Iowa?

    Those are “stunts”.

  4. >> “not the names of the companies where the person previously worked.”

    I tried to do a “functional resume” because I really like the idea of my resume saying what I can _do_ and what I have done. But I kept getting pushback from recruiters and hiring managers who couldn’t read it. They wanted a conventional resume. Apparently, it _really matters_ to a lot of people _where_ (and when) you created a spreadsheet or wrote a tutorial or edited 500 pages of documentation.

    I can’t understand why, but where and when seem to matter a lot more than what.

    1. Every time I’ve seen a functional resume it’s because the person is trying to hide a long period of unemployment or multiple firings or something. That’s why recruiters don’t like functional resumes.

      1. So it’s a lose lose scenario for people who, for whatever reasons, have not had the luxury of stable employment?

      2. So it’s a lose lose scenario for people who, for whatever reasons, have not had the luxury of stable employment?

  5. Rather than “tasks” (which are either make-work or take enough time that they should be paid) I would like to see more companies find a way to use actual past work. Unfortunately, in too many cases, actual past work is all under NDA and locked behind firewalls.

  6. Hey Suzanne, from a grateful tech writer to an admired blogger:

    > Instead of pouring over resumes

    You wanted “poring” here, rather than “pouring”. The first means paying a lot of attention, and the second means you’re feeling a little thirsty.

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