There are indications that resumes may not cut ice with recruiters, certainly not as much as they once did. The quality of the resume does not matter, as an increasing number of companies are looking beyond resumes and focussing directly on identifying skills and having interviews and interactions, says a report by an AI-powered recruitment solutions firm.
The report titled ‘No Resumes Please: Paving the way for talent-centric recruitment’ by HirePro found that only 1% of the recruiters rely solely on resumes in this digital era. Seventy percent of the recruiters go through resumes, but mostly rely on interviews or candidate interactions.
For each job listing, there are 250 candidates and only 10 get shortlisted. The report says that 75% of the candidates do not get past the initial screening, and 30% do not get a chance despite having the required skills. More than 50% of the candidates claim skills in their resume that they barely possess.
Another concerning trend is that 85% of job seekers make false claims in their resumes, which is up from 65% a decade ago.
The report says that despite listing a plethora of skills on their resumes, many candidates lack substantial professional experience or subject-matter expertise in those areas. The use of standard resume templates, ‘professional’ resume writers and AI tools like ChatGPT have exacerbated this problem.
Job descriptions are increasingly laying emphasis on behavioural skills, but are they mentioned in the resume? While a whopping 92% of job descriptions specify the need for behavioural attributes, only 38% of the resumes actually mention these traits. More than 40% of job descriptions mention behavioural requirements but a mere 6% of the resumes mention behavioural attributes.
According to the HirePro report, five years ago, factors like job stability and keyword matching were considered critical, with a weightage of 49% and 39% respectively, which have since declined to 33% and 27% respectively. Currently, emphasis is placed on individual assessments, which has surged from 26% to 49% over this period. Although relevant experience continues to be important, its significance has decreased from 63% to 48%. Additionally, with the emergence of generative AI and autocorrect tools, the importance given to formatting and grammatical accuracy has reduced from 19% to 14%.
The report also says that making a career-switch proves to be near impossible in a resume-centric hiring process. A substantial 60% of recruiters are hesitant to consider candidates who lack relevant experience, even if they possess certifications. Besides, 92% of career switches predominantly happen within the same organisation, as resumes play an insignificant role in such cases.
In such a scenario, candidates acquire new skills, undergo training, earn certifications and embark on a new career path in pursuit of new challenges.
Candidates perform better when chosen via assessments as against traditional methods. Analysis of performance statistics shows that such candidates exhibit better performance — GCC (64%), startups (46%), IT services (73%) and BPO support (87%).
Presently, 90% of the recruiter searches are skill-centric. While education and experience are used as initial screening criteria, assessments are the decisive factor in the hiring process. A significant 75% of recruiters anticipate that skill-based hiring will take centre stage in the coming 18 months, the report adds.
These findings were based on an analysis of 45,000 candidate resumes, 3,000 job postings, a survey involving more than 3,000 hiring managers and feedback from over 500 corporate customers.
Published - November 01, 2023 02:01 pm IST
