Resume Disconnection from Being Human

The resume has been a wonderful thing for many years. It’s a simple way to quickly assess the capabilities of an applicant. So far we haven’t come up with a better, simpler solution than a resume. Although, we see companies like Zappos essentially doing away with resumes. We’ll see if that goes mainstream or if it only works for a narrow use case.

One major problem with the resume world we live in is that it’s created a culture of hiring qualifications instead of talent. This is a major challenge in the hiring process and the resume as we know it today helps to perpetuate this problem. Resumes at their core are all about qualifications. Creating a resume that shows your talent and not just your qualifications is a really hard thing to do.

I was recently talking with Adam Greenberg from EMR Staffing Partners and he said something that reinforced the challenges I just described. He suggested that the problem with a stack of resumes is that it doesn’t feel like a stack of people. The resume seems very disconnected from the human that’s connected on the other end.

I don’t think this is the case for all hiring managers, but I’ve seen what Adam describes as well. When evaluating a resume, it’s easy to just consider the qualifications listed and not consider the talent found on the other end of the resume. Yes, there’s a human attached to every resume and as humans we can learn, grow, and adapt.

Certainly I’m not saying we should blindly hire people that aren’t qualified. However, I’ve heard over and over again from recruiters and hiring managers that they’ll often include a talented, but not qualified person in their pool of candidates and after the interview process they end up hiring the unqualified, but talented individual.

Have you seen this in action in your organization? Is this a good or a bad thing?

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

1 Comment

  • After 5 years of looking for employment in the Health Care field – I have a Masters in Public Policy Administration – and 15 years industry in Health Insurance Payer, Collections, Sales and Advocacy – over 400 applications – 2 call backs. TWO.
    There is not a talent shortage – I can count less that 100 people that have read the PPACA bill in its entirety, and have a sensible, proven solutions to it – my phone should have rang.

    In the last 5 years – 9 of the 12 predictions I made about that bill have come true; the last one being corporate inversions to avoid the legislation all together – there are 3 left; and ya’ll are right on track to hit them.

    Which is why I am overseas, and away from the chaos.
    You want solutions out of and away from that law? – should have hired me when I was cheap.
    Watching it from the sidelines – I make money when it fails – so I am in no hurry to solve it.
    Health Care Hit-Man
    PS #10 is when large employers decide to self fund and opt out of the ‘exchanges’ ~ watch for it.

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