Why do 85% of Candidates Cheat on their Resumes?
The article is quite old, but the problem is relevant. Who hasn’t embellished their accomplishments on their resume or written positions that didn’t match their employment record? Admit it.
I was doing it all the time, and I’ve seen my employees do this kind of thing, too. How do you stop the vicious practice and make a trusted and vetted resume the industry standard?
This situation is caused, as I see it, by the fact that globally society has not yet shifted from a “competition” narrative to a “match-matching” narrative. This approach has been shaped by the marketing and promotion industry, where it is more effective to get to your leads faster than your competitors and attack them with your message 5–7 times. Part of this problem is solved by the ever-emerging startups, which start out by hitting only the pain of a particular segment. But then they become corporations, if they are successful, and they have to switch sooner or later to outreach marketing. The advertising mechanics of Google and Facebook, among other things, are pushing them toward this, because narrowing the segment increases the cost of a lead. At some point, the unit economy stops working and you start seeding to everyone.
In recruitment, only networking and the employer’s personal connections protect against the problem of competing for talents. I’m avoiding the issue of employer brand, because that’s also about the “competition” narrative. It’s usually the only way to get trusted information about a candidate and somehow verify their experience and skills. But it’s crazy to look for someone suitable using only your networking.
So my colleague and I started exploring this issue a step by step, working on a new project. We want to create a trusted and vetted blockchain-based CV. We’re still in the process of researching, but what we’ve already learned:
- To create a trusted CV, employers need to validate their employees’ achievements and skills in an open system. But employers don’t want to do this, because other companies will immediately steal talented employees away from them. The fear pattern is at play. The argument that talents will rush to such a company because they will get a credible CV doesn’t even help here.
- The concept of confirming skills and talent works perfectly for young employees looking for their first full-time job. Employers are willing to pay to find such talents, and hackathon organizers, universities, and other online education institutions can confirm candidates’ achievements in such a scheme. However, here is another problem, you can not scale up only on the beginners, because the candidates will live in this system only for a few years: the last year of college.
Which other angle can one take on such an ambitious task as changing the world for the better in terms of finding a job and a dream candidate for a particular case study? I’m stuck for now, but maybe you can give me a hint.