Heartburn on Monday morning.

It’s 9:27 a.m. and I have heartburn. I thought it might have been acid reflux from the bowling alley chili dogs on Saturday night but then I read a blog post by Phil Rosenberg from “reCareered & Rainmakers Global” and the dogs were off the hook.

What gives me heartburn is the concept of “Resume Search Optimization” as Phil discusses it. Basically he takes SEO (search engine optimization) and applies the concepts to creating a resume tailored to the job description for the job to which you are applying . Here’s why this concept does nothing to “optimize” the recruiting process:

  • Job descriptions are rarely written any better than a resume. They are usually a complex amalgamation of inputs from HR benchmark reports, Compensation, Recruiting and some final tweaking from a Hiring Manager with too much on his/her plate. They don’t really tell you about the person needed to do the job. They simply describe the laundry list of skills and arbitrary timeframes (3-5 years? So if I have 2.5 or 6, you DON’T want to see me?) the “machine” says will produce the best employee. Matching one poorly written document to another poorly written document is not anyone’s definition of optimization!

 

  • Optimization is not desperation. Today the talk in recruiting is all about the “passive candidate”. The virtual panacea of recruiting is locating people who are NOT looking for a job (because they are engaged at work today!) and convincing them to make a move. There is a spectrum between “passive” and “active” and in between the extremes is where quality meets quantity. None but the most active candidates are going to tweak every resume sent/posted to each job description. This means that recruiters who pull up your “rigged” resume will see it but may also perceive it as less quality once they see how “optimized” it is (indicating a very active candidate).

The system is broken and “rigging” resumes is a HUGE part of the problem. There has to be a better way; one that relies on a more reliable search methodology that produces the best resumes coming from people currently looking for a job as well as those who may be putting a toe in the water but are not desperately active in a job search. Recruiters have to balance the need for speed (easily retrievable resumes from the top of the search) with the imperative for quality (those who are not rigging and therefore lower in the search results) if they are providing the service they promise to hiring managers.

Please don’t rig your resume, it doesn’t optimize anything. Find a better way to get in front of the people who are actually looking for YOU and the unique competencies and value you can add to their company.

 

July 14, 2008 | Filed Under Industry Perspectives | Leave a Comment