Why your Resume is Still the Most Important Filter in Skills-Based Hiring
Introduction - Skills-Based Assessments are here to stay
Companies are always trying to find the top talents.
For fresh graduates coming out of universities, companies now are coming up with graduate programs that offer structured trainings and job rotations in order to attract fresh graduates.
For non-entry level roles, companies now have so many criteria and pre-requisites that they are looking for in a candidate.
This means that companies have to evolve their recruitment practices to keep up with their hiring practices. There is a shift towards skills-based hiring instead of solely relying on traditional processes of reviewing resumes and traditional interviews.
Let’s address these questions in today’s article:
What is skills-based hiring and skills-based assessments?
Also, with skills-based assessments, does this mean that the resume is not as important anymore?
What is “Skills-based Hiring”?
Let’s address what “Skill-based hiring” is. Companies are changing what they are looking at in order to hire. Instead of looking at your past experience of what you have done, now there is a shift to finding out what actual abilities and skills you have accumulated.
In other words:
Instead of looking at Credentials, they look at Capabilities.
Instead of looking at Past Job Experience, they look at Future Potential.
Because of this, there is this idea that resumes which usually shows past experiences will no longer be important in skills-based hiring. That’s not true. Resume still has a role to play.
Because Skills-Based hiring may sound good in theory, but it’s very difficult to assess skills in practice.
Assessment Methods and Cost of Skills-based Hiring
The traditional way of screening resumes and usual interviews are no longer enough to assess skills. The methods of assessment has to evolve to assess skills.
Here are some of the examples of such assessments:
Skills assessments in the form of a Practical Test (e.g. Coding Test);
Personality Tests to test for traits or behaviours that is exhibited in situations;
Case Studies and Presentation that candidates have to prepare before an interview;
Gamification to Assess Behaviours - A test that people may be familiar with is called Pymetrics test. Candidates are put through a series of games. Based on the actions in those games, they come up with a behavioural profile of the candidate.
As a company, it is expensive to administer such assessment methods. Because you either have to create these assessments on your own or you have to hire another company to run them.
Imagine putting every single applicant through such assessments, it is actually going to be costly to do that.
Resume is still important - Companies use the Resume as the First Filter to save Money.
From a practical sense to save money, there has to be some sort of filter that companies apply to ONLY send the ‘right’ candidates to go through such assessments.
What is the best and cheapest way to use as a filter? The answer is a resume. Based on a simple screening of your resume, companies can assess fit based on their criteria.
For example, in management trainee programs, companies are usually targeting undergraduates. Company may set a criterion to screen resumes to verify that the candidate must be an undergraduate. Thus, if you have a graduation year on your resume > you get filtered out.
There could be criteria set where they are filtering by degree specialisations or certain certifications or skills that you must have. All these filters will be based on your resume.
By using resumes to filter candidates, companies don’t waste unnecessary time and money on assessing candidates that they will never hire in the first place.
Thus, there is still use for a resume. The first baseline of finding out what skills you may have still falls back to what is written in your resume.
Concluding Thoughts - Try to Differentiate Yourself.
Whichever method that companies use to assess candidates, it is going to be very difficult to always stay ahead of the curve and find ways to keep beating those methods.
One principle that has served me well - Always look to differentiate. When you are different (in a positive manner), you will always stand out from other candidates.
One way to stand out is to spend time to think about the goals that you want for your career. Find which companies, which roles (internal or external), which career steps can help you get closer to your career goals.
Just by being very clear with your career goals, and being able to convey that to people, you already stand out from other candidates. Because in interviews, you will be able to show your conviction as the company/role you are interviewing for is what you need for your career.
Take some time to ponder about your career, it will serve a purpose.
Side Note:
This is one article of a series of 4 articles. In this series, I explore the relevance of resumes today and share how to optimise your resume. This came about because I had went onto a radio show on Money FM89.3 to discuss about this topic. You can watch this on YouTube by clicking here.
I highly encourage you to read this first article before moving on to the others as I want to preface the reason for why focusing on your resume is important. More importantly, illustrating to you the impact your resume could have on your financial wellbeing.
