Strategy #15: Get Rid Of CVs And Resumes

Can you conduct a job search without relying on CVs, resumes and the rest of the usual application paraphernalia that you’re undoubtedly very familiar with? The quick answer is a resounding yes and in this strategy article I’m going to tell you how and why. As a preview of what’s coming up, resumes and CVs hinder you rather than help you get a great job. There are six good reasons for this and you’re about to learn the ugly truth behind the great CV and resume con.

This isn’t just a lot of hot air from someone who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I’ve sat in the recruiter’s chair for many years and I’ve interviewed countless applicants for all sorts of jobs, and on behalf of multiple businesses I’ve worked for and owned myself. I’ve run intensive training courses for professional interviewers, going all the way back to the 1990s, so I know exactly how CVs and resumes slot into the recruitment picture.

I’ve been an interview consultant for major organisations, advising on candidate and interviewer performance. I’ve delivered specialist courses and written advanced interview-skills training manuals too, so I’ve pretty much seen it all. I know what the best candidates say and do, not to mention the way top-flight interviewers think and operate, and you’re about to get the benefit of my expertise regarding CVs and resumes right here.

Straight away, let me say that there’s nothing wrong with creating a CV or resume per se. The problem is with how it’s used. There’s an excellent function of these documents which is to clarify your personal needs and work requirements in a job. They enable you to see patterns in your current and previous employment and consider future work objectives as part of the planning stage of your job search. However, your resume or CV shouldn’t leave your computer desktop and must never, ever get in front of a hiring manager. I’ll tell you why in a moment or two.

For most job hunters, a CV or resume has become a non-negotiable element of their work-search project. It’s an unquestioned maxim that they should be the centre-piece of any conventional job search. There’s a rock-solid belief that without a gleaming resume or CV you haven’t got a hope of being considered by any employer, let alone getting in front of a final-stage interviewer. If you can’t write one yourself, you can always pay someone to write it for you and a cottage industry has sprung up that promises you the earth if you give them good money in exchange for a shiny CV or resume like no other.

Well, I fundamentally disagree with the idea of centring your job-search around a resume or CV. The issues fall into 6 broad categories. In ascending order of being problematic, these are the difficulties with using CVs or resumes;

1. They are extremely reductive and usually poorly-written. Without knowing precisely what to focus on, condensing everything you’ve got to offer a new employer into 2 sides of A4 paper, or the equivalent computer version, is almost impossible. Most CVs and resumes feature bland claims that put a positive spin on a range of dubious achievements but these rarely register with a recruiter. Instead, they come across in a scatter-gun fashion. Unless you’re an expert copy writer who can produce attention-grabbing phrases to order, it’s unlikely that you can create a compelling call-to-action message anywhere near well enough in such a short space.
2. They depend far too much on chance. An ideal CV or resume will talk to a named individual whose concerns and interests are well-understood, not an anonymous recipient you don’t know from Adam. If you think that a faceless hiring manager will notice the salient points of your career and act upon them, think again. The vast majority of CVs and resumes aim to be all things to all people and are far too general to be of much use. What’s needed is laser-like focus but that’s a tough ask unless you do heavy-duty research on each and every job you submit your CV or resume for.
3. They hardly ever get read properly. Research shows that, on average, a CV or resume receives six seconds’ worth of attention before a decision is made to slide it onto the accept pile or to dump it in the reject bin. That’s assuming that a real person reads it, not a machine. Six seconds to grab someone’s attention and ask them to give you an opportunity is nothing at all, especially if the document is badly-written, poorly-laid out and vague on details. Check the Six-Second Resume Challenge to see what you’re up against. 
4. Related to points one and two, they almost always focus on your past achievements, not on your future value to a new employer. Nearly every CV and resume I’ve come across, and that count-number is well into the tens of thousands, features “I did this, I did that, I did the other with my previous employers” type of information. Almost nothing about “I will specifically do this for your business, and this is how and why”. This old-school approach fails to address my specific concerns as an employer in any meaningful way. It also assumes that a busy hiring manager will be inclined to pick through the information you present, give due credence to your previous employment record, then take the time to make an educated judgement about how whatever you did before might apply to the company you now want to join. All in six seconds. Or perhaps not.
5. They suck you into thinking and behaving like a conventional job searcher with all of the attendant problems that I talk about here.
6. Most damagingly of all, they suck hiring managers into treating you as a conventional job searcher with all of the attendant problems that I talk about here.

Those last two problems are the biggest and most intractable of all, with the final one taking the prize for single worst reason to use a CV or resume.

Anything you do that proves you’re a conformist, anything that shows you’re prepared to take your chances amongst hundreds of other candidates in the great job-hunt lottery, consigns you to mind-bending odds against succeeding. And any competent hiring manager knows this very well. It’s one of the things I teach professional interviewers during my dedicated training courses for these people, and this knowledge gives them a major advantage over almost every candidate who uses a conventional approach.

By submitting any sort of typical job-hunt documentation, including CVs, resumes, speculative emails and letters of application, you’re explicitly telling a hiring manager that you don’t think of yourself as anything more than a commodity who’s worthy of minimal consideration. The same goes if you’re prepared to fill in application or pre-check forms of any kind. By conforming to type, you’re sending out a message that you don’t think you’re anything special and you’re happy to be treated like every other ordinary person who wants the job.    

Thinking and behaving like a herd-mentality job applicant makes it almost impossible to differentiate yourself from everyone else in the running, and there’s no better example of this than clinging to a CV or resume mentality. You may recall that I spoke about the benefits of differentiation in strategy #14, and I’ll be returning to this topic in upcoming articles. It’s at the core of what my job-search method is all about.

So, what’s the alternative to using a CV or resume? Quite simply, don’t use one. Ever since I adopted the system of finding work that I outline in the Vocation Master programme, I’ve never used a CV or resume, nor any kind of written summary of my experience, background or skills. And I can tell you that I’ve breezed through every job search without any problem whatsoever. The same goes for the vast majority of people I’ve trained to use my job-search strategy.

Part of the reason for this is at the core of why CVs and resumes are so essential for almost every herd-instinct, conventional-route job seeker. The primary function of these documents is to get you through the door of a hiring decision maker. It’s a pretty circuitous route that you take to arrive at that door if you do things the standard way, but there’s no getting around the fact that resumes and CVs are nothing more than buffed-up begging cards.

Once you’ve run the application gauntlet, been called to interview and actually got to speak with the person who’s got the power to hire you, all bets are off. A lazy interviewer, or a poorly-prepared candidate, will use the CV or resume as a prompt for discussion topics in the job interview. A clued-up recruiter and a well-prepared applicant will do things very differently and move on from background data that’s featured on their work history document.

They’ll explore the pivotal reasons that this person should be hired, including a demonstration that they understand the nature of the employer’s main challenges and how the potential new staff member will go about solving them. The well-informed job hunter will do the job, right there in the interview. None of this requires the use of a CV or resume because they’re already inside the office of the decision maker and the focus of the meeting shifts decisively forward, well beyond words, numbers and dates on a piece of paper or an electronic screen.    

There’s a lot more to this than what I talk about here, as you might expect. If you relate to what I’m saying, or your interest is piqued by the prospect of getting rid of your CV or resume, I suggest you investigate my complete Job Search Masterclass. I explain how to implement my entire job-hunt system, without CVs or resumes of course.

If you prefer to watch training materials rather than read or listen to them, follow this link to my YouTube channel where you can access the video version of this article;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLYZL1iCPos&t=75s

And finally, if you have any questions about the issues I raise here, or if you'd like to contact me personally, please get in touch via LinkedIn;

https://www.linkedin.com/in/vocationmaster/