See: /2012/07/11/make-bad-hires/

Andy

I want to know what is going to compel the person to contribute on the team when everything breaks loose (in good and bad ways). What moves them, inspires them. What big dreams have they risked everything for? What keeps them up at night?

I want to know all of the weird, great, crazy ways they could bring their whole self, all of their experiences, knowledge, values and perspectives to make a difference.

A CV can’t tell you that.

And when I’m on the hiring side, the best candidates are always the ones we learned about through personal connections. Again, we have to get their resumé as a formality. We may even bring it to the interview. But the most revealing interview activities are pairing or having the candidate demonstrate how they would do something such as test a particular UI.

I look for a person with the right mindset and attitude, it is hard to capture that on a CV, for sure. I wish sites like LinkedIn delivered more on their promise to connect people up. It seems to happen more the old-fashioned way, through personal connections.

Oh, nice, thanks!

I’ve just been reading “Joy, Inc.” about Menlo Innovations. They seem to share the #NoCV philosophy, and in the book describe at length how they go about recruiting.

– Bob

Yes, it would be good to hear some proposals. In Bob Marshalls case, he has alluded to an online profile being a better representation of a person. Having found and hired through this route successfully on several occasions, there are pitfalls. I have seen some very great online presences, with endless references, quotations, conferences videos, and followers turn out to be complete frauds in the workplace, or more focused on their online profile to have time to do the work!

I dont think it matters too much what the source of a potential employee is, be it CV, online profile, recommendation, or networking. What those looking for candidates should remember is to open up multiple channels of search, and look for personal recommendation from a trusted source to back up a potential offer of employment.

Try coming from this from another angle as I did, ‘recruited’ into a nominal role (more of an invitation to engage wrapped up in the context of a job), given opportunity to explore, refine, grown, fulfill, self-actualise’ etc; then try and “CV” that or tell a recruitment droid that and you are now a square peg and you no longer fit in round holes.

When times are tighter, like now, I think employers are more likely to write a lengthy, abstract ‘person specification’ before meeting candidates. Because it’s a buyer’s market and they can. Or maybe they feel they must, to protect themselves from the deluge of applicants? 😉 They then use the CV as a tool to try and match real people to their abstract spec.

I fully agree that the CV (and the disembodied ‘person specification’) are the emblems of a broken system. I’m hopeful that innovators staking out new markets might see it differently though, and also that alternative approaches might go more mainstream in better economic times. Thanks for the #NoCV campaign.

I am a strong believer that recruiters should be more innovative that can help create opportunities for candidates to prove their knowledge content, how they would approach a certain real life situational problem but also for the recruiter to illustrate their history, culture and current work environment.

I would certainly like the end of the CV reliance and focus on systems that provide a systematic & fair recruitment process that helps identify talent and more importantly data that helps develops succession planning from day 1.

I think overall, this is because the industry and process hasn’t understood that overall, it’s a Quality-related process, and as we know, trying to inspect in Quality rarely works any more than it does in coding. It’s particularly painful when applications go through multiple rounds of sequential inspection, where each round tries to do the same thing.

What we should be doing is constructing recruitment messages and selection processes that are self-error-proofing and built Quality in at source – ensuring that candidates who don’t stand a realistic chance of ultimate success – not just in getting the job but also in thriving in the environment – never get into the selection process in the first place.

I recently explored leaving the family consulting business to work elsewhere, but soon found exactly what you describe – broken recruiting processes.

I am back in the fold of my safe place in the family business – knowing there are only a few other places I would possibly enquire at – and those only because I know people who work there and have heard a lot about them….

#NoCV is a good movement.

Andrea

As a job seeker you are often at your most vulnerable and many recruiters exploit this, seemingly heartlessly. Not to mention the laziness they exhibit of not even bothering to read CV’s or cover letters, check social networking profiles and, most unforgivably, listen to what jobseeker wants. I back this campaign 100%.