Article Title: The Resume is Alive and Kickin
Author Byline: HireAbility Connects the World's Recruiters and Parses the World's Resumes
Author Website: www.hireability.com/join

 “The rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated,” said The Resume.

The article “The Death of the Resume” makes the same claim as the recent white paper “Can We Finally Retire the Resume?” available through ZoomInfo and written by Allan Schweyer of the Human Capital Institute:

“…there is no longer any reason for employers to rely on resumes, and yet the vast majority still do. Resumes are unstructured, difficult to search & compare, expensive to handle and frustrating to store and retrieve… The better approach [to recruiting] is to… require all applicants (external and internal) to submit their applications using e-profiles.”

“I haven’t retired,” cried The Resume. “I’m working but I’m under-employed and unappreciated.”

No doubt each Resume is a creative document, unique as its author. But is a standardized, restrictive e-profile really better for recruiting? Ask any Employer if they are buying a commodity, or a person with unique talents, attributes, and problem-solving (creative) qualities. How many times have you spotted something on someone’s resume that wasn’t identified in your job description or qualifying questions that made you want to interview the person? Wouldn’t a resume give you a better feel for someone’s suitability (soft skills) than cryptic answers to knock out questions?

Then consider how much time people actually have to fill out detailed online profiles. The same aforementioned white paper said that profiles should take less than 15 minutes to complete. “Amen, brother,” cried the applicant. Most profiles today take more than thirty minutes. The result: they’re abandoned. So ask yourself: “How much money did I pay through job postings and other marketing means to attract candidates only to fail to get their applications?"

BOOM! VROOM! VROOM! That’s the sound of the Baby Boomers driving to their retirement homes in Florida. Seventy-six (76) million baby boomers expect to retire in the next four to five years, to be replaced by only 46 million Gen Xers (US Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics). The shrinking labor pool means tougher talent wars. It must be easy to capture applicants if you want to compete. A lengthy profile process is not the way to do this.

“So how do I capture The Resume in a fast and useful way?” you ask…

Allan Schweyer will tell you in that same white paper that suggested The Resume’s retirement:

“…allow applicants to upload their standard resume and have it parsed into the appropriate fields of the profile (inexpensive technology is available to do this).”

In addition to saving you 99% of the cost of manual data entry, resume parsing technology will give you structured data – the stuff you need for accurate searching according to Allan Schweyer:

“Today’s powerful searching and ranking technology can improve screening efficiency and accuracy tremendously, for the greatest gains though, structured data is required.”

“So am I alive, retired or dead?” asked The Resume.

"Well," said the recruiter "you’re talking to me aren’t you?"

Article courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap, a content exchange service sponsored by CollegeRecruiter.com, a leading site for college students looking for internships and recent graduates searching for entry level jobs and other career opportunities.