Resumes are ridiculous
We all know resumes are a joke. They’re exaggerations. They’re filled with “action verbs” that don’t mean anything. They list job titles and responsibilities that are vaguely accurate at best. And there’s no way to verify most of what’s on there. The whole thing is a farce.
Worst of all, they’re too easy. Anyone can create a decent-enough resume. That’s why half-assed applicants love them so much. They can shotgun out hundreds at a time to potential employers. It’s another form of spam. They don’t care about landing your job; they just care about landing any job.
If someone sends out a resume to three hundred companies, that’s huge red flag right there. There’s no way that applicant has researched you. There’s no way he knows what’s different about your company.
if you hire based on this garbage, you’re missing the point of what hiring is about. Your want a specific candidate who cares specifically about your company, your products, your customers, and your job.
So how do you find these candidates? First step: Check the cover letter. In a cover letter, you get actual communication instead of a list of skills, verbs, and years of irrelevance. There’s no way an applicant can churn out hundreds of personalized letters. That’s why the cover letter is a much better test than a resume. You hear someone’s actual voice and are able recognize if it’s in tune with you and your company.
Trust your gut reaction. If the first paragraph sucks, the second has to work that much harder. If there’s no hook in the first three, it’s unlikely there’s a match there. On the other hand, if your gut is telling you there’s a chance at real match, then move on to the interview stage.
Forget about formal education
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education. – MARK TWAIN
There are plenty of companies out there who have educational requirements. They’ll only hire people with a college degree (sometimes in a specific field) or an advanced degree or a certain GPA or certification of some sort or some other requirement.
Come on. There are plenty of intelligent people who don’t excel in the classroom. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking you need someone from one of the “best” schools in order to get results. Ninety percent companies did not receive undergraduate degrees from Ivy League colleges. In fact, more received their undergraduate degrees from the University of Wisconsin than from Harvard (the most heavily represented Ivy school, with nine CEOs).
Too much time in academia can actually do you harm. Take writing, from example. When you get out of school, you have to unlearn so much of the way they teach you to write there. Some of the misguided lessons you learn in academia:
- The longer a document is, the more it matters.
- Stiff, formal tone is better than being conversational.
- Using big words is impressive.
- You need to write a certain number of words or pages to make a point.
- The format matters as much (or more) than the content of what you write.
It’s no wonder so much business writing winds up dry, wordy, and dripping with nonsense. People are just continuing the bad habits they picked up in school. It’s not just academia writing, either. There are a lot of skills that are useful in academia that aren’t worth much outside of it.
Bottom line: The pool of great candidates is far bigger than just people who completed college with a stellar GPA. Consider dropouts, people who had low GPAs, community-college students, and even those who just went to high school.