The market thinks:
CVs are the best way to gain insight into job applicants.
Thomas knows:
There’s a better way. To really get to know a candidate, you must look beyond the CV.
The story is a familiar one. You post a vacancy to a job board. Head home for the weekend. And then, come Monday, your inbox is bursting with applications. Hopeful, you spend some time narrowing down the really-not-right ones until you’re left with a handful of potential candidates. However, when it comes to comparing their applications, you’re suddenly not so sure…
Even though CVs are a great snapshot of who’s worked where, when, and for how long, they can’t tell you who has the right skills. Who’s a good fit for your team. Or who might seem to be the full package at first – but could cause trouble later on.
The truth is, CVs can only get you so far. But, despite the fact they often let unqualified candidates slip through the net, no one has found a better option. It’s time to go beyond. View our presentation or read on:
Why are CVs so inadequate?
To put it bluntly: someone with 10 years’ experience in a role might still be bad at it. Similarly, someone with less experience in the same role might have all the skills and personality traits needed to excel.
There’s also a wide gap between a real person and their curated 2D ‘self’. A CV is a promotional document, after all.
Then, there’s the issue of bias. Even when assessing CVs blind, it’s easy to be influenced by location, education, and so on. You can read more about this in our extensive resources on the topic of diversity.
In addition, screening CV after CV after CV can take huge amounts of your time. And is it worth it? Past experience isn’t a good predictor of future success. According to research by Schmidt and Hunter, only 16% of a person’s future success can be predicted by the jobs they’ve held in the past.
So, why do they persist as part of the recruitment process?
CVs provide a deceptively convenient overview of someone’s job and education history. They can give some insight into personality and how people present themselves. They’re also handy for highlighting how a person’s skills/training/abilities might basically match a role. But that’s about it.
If you can’t beat them, why not enhance them?
Go beyond the CV and you’ll find whole realms of hidden details. You’ll also give people who struggle to showcase their skills a chance to show who they really are.
With our assessments, you can bolster the basic information you might gain from a CV, and reduce bias in your selection process. All of which can help you truly understand applicants’ characteristics and fit – so you can say goodbye to making unqualified hires.
The truth is, CVs can only get you so far. But, despite the fact they often let unqualified candidates slip through the net, no one has found a better option. It’s time to go beyond.
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Top takeaways
Looking at CVs is ingrained in how businesses recruit, which means it’ll take a big behaviour change to switch things up. But there is a better way, and it only takes a simple change.
When you supplement CVs with Thomas assessments, you can stop bringing the wrong people into your business. How? By cutting through curated personas and getting to the heart of how individuals could really impact your team.
New to psychometric assessments? Get the lowdown here.
