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| Why
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|Digital Signature Technology |
|Workplace
Executive Summary |
|Problem of Identifying Candidate Quality |
|Dig-Sig Save File Instructions |
|Tips for Electronic Resumes |
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The Problem of Identifying Candidate Quality
Thomas J. Schmidt
President, CEO & Founder, Résuméfit
LLC
The weakest link for employers in the online hiring process
is their reliance on the resume as a major source of
information for making candidate
selection decisions. This paper will address the three big problems identifying
quality candidates using today’s resume standard and propose
a solution.
Section One: Weakest Link for Employers
Section Two: Four Big Resume Improvements
Section Three: Résuméfit's Integrated Evidentiary Résumé System™
Weakest Link for Employers
Big Problem #1 is the resume is an inherently untrustworthy document.
Studies conclude that between 40% - 70% of resumes exceed the boundaries
of good salesmanship. They may contain exaggerations or even bold lies. Scientifically
speaking the resume has a validity coefficient hovering around
zero. In other words, the typical resume is unable to predict future performance.
Bigger Problem #2 is today's resume lacks relevance and depth
of candidate information. Whether it is one’s career experiences, skills,
education, or workplace behavior, the resume does not have sufficient
information necessary to determine candidate quality.
Biggest Problem #3 is the resume is not measurable. Resume evaluation
is a highly subjective process, and a resume offers no clear, objective
process for linking the information it contains directly to the requirements
and responsibilities detailed in the job description.
Also, the garbage in – garbage out principle suggests that the résu-mess
going in to employer-centric hiring management solutions will continue to result
in poor hiring decisions. Job boards do nothing to address candidate quality
and the big advance in hiring systems today is that we can process a lot of bad
information very quickly.
Four Big Resume Improvements
The next section of this paper examines how identifying candidate quality can
be converted from an occasional event to a systematic business process that is
far more scientific and quantifiable. Please note that the suggested business
process is primarily candidate-centric as the burden of proof regarding one's
resume resides solely with the candidate.
A systematic business
process to identify candidate quality could be achieved if four big improvements
were made to a resume: (1) provide more detailed information about
career experiences and accomplishments; (2) produce and share workplace specific
behavior and competency information; (3) integrate this information as evidence
to support resume's claims; and (4) perform a comparative
analysis and measurement of the résumé’s data with the requirements
and responsibilities detailed in the job description.
Is it reasonable to expect an employer to provide candidates with meaningful
and substantive information about a job position, enabling them to make the best
and most predictable decisions about their future, if candidates are not willing
to do the same for the employer? The logical answer is "No, it is not reasonable."
However, both parties are deficient in giving each other appropriate informational
content
for either to exercise informed choice, make prudent decisions and create a predictable
employer – employee relationship.
Providing detailed information about the candidate's career experiences
and accomplishments could increase a resume's trustworthiness.
Information such as that gleaned from a well conducted, structured interview,
could be included. This would include evidence detailing the situation, actions,
and results of each career accomplishment. A resume's trustworthiness
could be further increased by providing contact information for a person or two
who could vouch for the veracity of each accomplishment.
Since few things give candidates more stress than being hired into a job that
they are ill-suited to perform, specific assessment data, which measures a range
of critical candidate characteristics in the workplace, could be an integral
part of their resume. Today's resumes have
a bias to the "formal" or the "hard" aspects of a candidate's
history, whereas their potential for the organization and their success on the
job often resides in the candidate’s "informal" or "soft" approaches
to work. Workplace trait and competency information could further raise the trustworthiness
of the resume and assist in identifying candidate quality.
Another key component of making candidate quality identification a systematic
business process is integration. Integration simply connects the employer's
requirements, which are found in their position description with the candidate’s
data, which is presently found in their resume, cover letter, education,
career experiences, workplace behavior assessment, skills, references, etc. Why
should a hiring manager have to manually establish mutual or reciprocal relationships
between the information in a candidate’s cover letter and resume against
the employer's job description? Further consider the fact that an assessment
test can produce twenty to thirty pages of good information. What hiring manager
has the time to read one assessment, much less many assessments?
Integration could bring about an essential degree of quality to the process of
candidate representation and subsequent employee selection. Integration could
save hiring managers review time while increasing their ability to reach more
objective hiring selection decisions.
Resumes should be measurable. If someone is going to measure, evaluate,
or appraise a candidate against some criteria, shouldn't the tool used
be more than the 45 second "stare and compare" technique or an automated
system using data from a standard resume that is inherently untrustworthy
and deficient in content?
Candidate quality could be identified through a mathematical measurement after
completing a comprehensive resume process utilizing science and
structured processes. The science is a normative assessment that measures workplace
behavior with results based on a continuum. Structured processes provide for
the collection of detailed employment history data as well as identified references.
Workplace trait data, career experiences, accomplishments and educational data
could then be associated with each other to support the claims made on the candidate's
resume as well as the requirements and responsibilities of the
job being applied for.
A systematic business process for identifying candidate quality is achievable
if candidates complete a comprehensive resume process that provides
an essential degree of quality to the process of candidate representation and
subsequent employee selection.
Résuméfit's Integrated Evidentiary Résumé System™
The last section of this paper describes a newly proposed hiring management system.
Résuméfit's
patent pending Integrated Evidentiary Résumé System™ (IERS™)
addresses the issue of identifying candidate quality for both the individual
candidate and the prospective hiring manger.
As a result of completing a comprehensive resume process, the IERS™ calculates
three Candidate Fit Indices, which predicts a candidate’s "fit" against
the position they're applying for. All indices are reported on a scale
of 0 – 10. They are:
1. Experience Fit Index
2. Trait Fit Index
3. Composite Fit Index
The Candidate’s Experience Fit Index results from the association of the
candidate's position summaries, career accomplishments, references, workplace
trait characteristics, and education against the elements (requirements and responsibilities)
of the job description. The elements can be both "hard", e.g., 5
years regional sales experience, and "soft", e.g. innovative, and
a forward thinker. The candidate self-assesses their ability to fulfill each
element and associates proof from data made available as a result of the assessments
and employment history detail. The IERS™ calculates a number, e.g. 7.4,
which predicts the candidate's ability to meet the requirements and responsibilities
of the job description. The higher the Candidate's Experience Fit Index
on a scale of 0 - 10, the more likely it is that the candidate has the experience
requested in the job description.
The Trait Fit Index results from the candidate completing the WorkPlace or SchoolPlace Big Five
ProFile™ (WB5P™). The WB5P™ or the SB5P™ assesses behavior in the workplace
and uses workplace terms and examples in the questions. People taking the assessment
are asked to
think about themselves at work as they answer the questions since most people
report that they are somewhat different at work than in their lives at-large.
Data is reported on five workplace traits, twenty-four workplace subtraits, and
fifty-four workplace competencies. The candidate selects a matching position
title from the Department of Labor’s Occupational Information Network (O*NET).
A comparative analysis is made between the candidate’s WB5P results and
the O*NET trait information. The IERS™ returns a number, e.g. 8.6, which
predicts the candidate's ability to meet the "informal" or "soft" approaches
to work. Again, the higher the number on a scale of 0 - 10, the greater the probability
the candidate has the right traits to perform the job. The WB5P and SB5P coefficient alpha,
validity, and reliability are among the highest of all other assessments.
The Composite Fit Index is simply the average of the Experience and Trait
Fit Indices. A candidate having sufficiently high fit indices should be
considered worthy of review. He or she makes it to the top of the "right" resume
pile,
and to the front of the "right" interview line. Candidates who don't
sufficiently meet the position's requirements and responsibilities will
not likely submit an IERS™. If they do, it will almost immediately become
evident that they have not identified themselves as being a quality candidate
for the position in question.
The primarily candidate-centric business model becomes collaborative when an
employer / hiring manager completes a job specification inventory process (future) that
allows them to weight the job's requirements, responsibilities, experiences,
workplace traits, and other qualifications. The candidate's fit indices
are refined or made more accurate as a result. The end result from using the
IERS™ is a filtration process that provides a data-driven, standardized
way to compare candidate qualifications with a job’s requirements.
Note that even if an employer doesn't complete a job specification inventory,
the employer greatly benefits from those candidates who submit an IERS™,
which transforms "soft" or subjective candidate information into
a "harder," more objective, more structured form required to identify
good job fit and increase the resume's content and trustworthiness.
The Integrated Evidentiary Résumé System™ also
addresses
the issue of portability. In theory a candidate can complete one employer's
website application process, and then another, and then another ad infinitum.
Although it would be wrong to say that all employers want identical employment
application information, it's a safe bet that their application processes
are highly comparable. Since the resume is a required document,
why not make it a better document that best serves both candidates and hiring
managers?
Lastly is the issue of trustworthiness. There's no use putting critical content
on a resume document if anyone can edit / alter the Scientifically based information.
Résuméfit's class 3 code signing certificate from VeriSign is used to
sign every Dig-Sig IERS™. If our digital signature is on the MS Word document,
you can trust that it came from Résuméfit and that the document has not
been altered. Please also note that Résuméfit is not a job board. We
do NOT post jobs nor do we allow for paid searches of our databases.
Résuméfit is founded on integrity,
innovation, a ceaseless quest to represent candidates in the most complete and
scientific way possible, and
to provide hiring managers the ability to reach more objective hiring decisions.
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