Is the job candidate too hip for you?

A few weeks ago I was doing a training session for a hiring search commiitee on our online Applicant Tracking System . It was a routine session, one I have done 20 times before, the standard stuff - here's how you log in, here's how you find your candidates, here's how you review their resumes.  It was routine right up to the point when I clicked on the link to the first candidate's resume and we were all presented with something like this:

It was a resume, or CV, built using the VisualCV service. Visual CV describes their service as "A better resume, online. Include video, pictures and a portfolio of your best work samples. Securely share different versions with employers, colleagues and friends, and control who sees what."

It is also free for candidates to use, which is nice. 

But the ability for the candidate to effectively create a 'applicant website' using Visual CV is very powerful.  Add videos showing your skills or demonstrating a product you have developed.  Add slideshows showing off your designs and ideas. Include audio clips of clients attesting to your wonderfulness. Link to your blog that contains evidence of your thought leadership and expertise.

Back to my training session. 

The thing I immediately noticed was that the hiring committee had no idea what they were looking at.  I had to stop the training to explain and practically demo Visual CV for them, and explain how a candidate who would create a Visual CV is certainly one comfortable with new technology and was on the cutting edge so to speak. I even advocated giving this candidate extra points for creativity and vision.

The moral of the story?

More and more of your candidates will be using services like Visual CV, giving you their blog address, and their LinkedIn or Facebook profiles to use in your evaluation process.  Don't stay hung up on the old classic 'paper resume in Word format' paradigm.

Your candidates are moving forward, your hiring thought processes need to move forward as well.

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If you have to train your casual users,

then the system is probably too complex.

One of my roles is to train users on our online Job Vacancy and Applicant Tracking system.  I easily spend a full hour or more on the fairly laborious five page process to enter and submit a job vacancy for approval.  Once a vacancy is submitted, in some cases as many as eight approvals are required before the job can be advertised.

I finally concluded today that the system and the associated processes are just too complex, difficult, and at times counter intuitive. 

We need to make things simpler, easier to use, and maybe even enjoyable for users if we expect them to embrace the systems and processes that we have tried to convince them are so far superior to the 'old' methods.

And sometimes we need to be strong enough to admit we made a mistake, go back to the start, and build someting else, something better, even if it means taking some lumps in the short term.