It's the System, Not the People!!

Seth Godin wrote an interesting blog entry this morning that I found myself needing to comment on.

The basic premise...you don't need a resume if you are truly remarkable. That a resume just points out all the things you DON'T have in order to qualify for a job rather than point out what makes you so good at what you do. Plus, a resume is just so...drab and unimaginative...and just puts you in the rest of the heap of people that are all trying to be "cogs in the big machine."

I agree where Seth is going with this...but I disagree with his audience (ironic given that Seth is a marketing guy). You see, I never thought remarkable people needed to be the ones who had to be prodded to do away with their resumes. I talk to people each day who are extraordinary at what they do--and none of them have had to write up a resume for as long as they've been doing what they love.

So where is the breakdown? My contention is the "big machines" that employ these people. So rather than deliver this message to the people, I think Seth needs to address the main culprit here: employers.

For employers, resumes are safe. They're consistent. They provide some sort of "objective" way of filtering through the hundreds of resumes they come across each day. Like one person commented on Seth's blog post, resumes are a "necessary evil." Why? They're necessary because of the system in which we all operate in.

So to take a cue from Andy Stanley, I want to suggest one thing: rather than change people, we need to change the system. Systems drive behavior. It's not that people WANT to write resumes. They have to. But why do they have to? Because it's the stupid employers who demand them!!! A whole industry (job boards and resume databases) has spawned from this system!!!

In the end, my suggestion is that a few bold companies just need to step up. More importantly, a few bold recruiting departments need to step it up. In the frenetic, chaotic environment that recruiters often operate in...it's too easy to fall back into the resume system that we all know and are familiar with.

This is the challenge for recruiters: When you have 300 positions to fill yesterday, what are you going to do? Go through 800 resumes in the hopes that you find some qualified candidates? Or (gasp) buck the trend and begin to utilize non-traditional ways to evaluate talent? The latter takes more time (A LOT more time). Time that recruiters don't really have.

This brings us to the challenge for recruiting leaders, or HR leaders: What are you going to do to create a SYSTEM that supports recruiters who take the time to evaluate talent apart from resumes? Because if your system supports resumes...guess what? Your recruiters will too. And no amount of talk, conference calls, or incentives will motivate them towards the other route over the long term.

Sure, overhauling the system isn't easy. It sure isn't going to happen overnight. But like I said, if a few bold companies begin to take steps towards creating new systems...I think people like Seth Godin will have less to worry about in the future. The remarkable people will finally have a system that embraces them.

Cover Letters Can Be A Good Laugh

So if you wanted a good laugh today, here are some fun reads from the world of recruiting...ah, yes. The notorious cover letter. Done well, they can distinguish you from a stack of resumes in a recruiter's inbox. Done poorly...well...you end up on blog postings like this. ;)

My personal favorite? Ironically, it would still probably catch my attention because of its sheer absurdity. :o So I guess it would work. But that's just me.

"My name is ____, and I kick ass. See resume for details."

LinkedIn's New Look

So I log into LinkedIn today...and what do I see? A fresh new site layout! Except that it's not so fresh...and not so "new."

Why the hater-ade?

Anyone else notice how the re-design mimics (ever so slightly) the look of Facebook? You have two main white spaces on both sides of the main page view. And now because of this new increased white space on either side, you cause the user to focus on the middle where you have features like Network Updates or Company News...which in my opinion is not so different than the Newsfeed section on Facebook when users first log in. If LinkedIn introduces a Slide wiki in the near future, I'll officially lose all faith that this site is on the right track here.

But all kidding aside, there were also recent murmurs within the walls of LinkedIn's corporate digs that things were not all that great. Hmmmm...

You get where I'm going with this. I've never been a fan of following an industry leader if you can avoid it. My fear for LinkedIn is that they begin to operate in follow mode vs. trying to out-innovate their competition. This, coupled with the fact that they seem to have their own issues in-house, has me wondering where the heck LinkedIn is going to end up in the next 1-3 years: has been, cash cow for a media conglomerate, or web networking visionary?

My money isn't on the last one...