UK 
United StatesIf you scrap the CV, how do you decide who to interview?
Businesses are starting to question the value of a CV. Dramatic shifts have encircled the working world and are impacting how it operates. A drive to remove bias and level the playing field. A lockdown induced digitisation. A supply of jobs outstripping demand. And, significantly, a growing skills mismatch between a host of new digital jobs and the talent to fill them. These are all factors that are only increasing the (already needed) desire to rethink hiring.
Our latest report uncovered that two thirds of business leaders are already considering scrapping the CV. But much less clear to them is how to go about what to replace it with in terms of the business need to identify who to interview without it. The CV has been default go-to for anyone hiring as the data point to screen candidates in or out, but this needs to change if they’re to start selecting for experience and potential.
Put simply, while a significant number of leaders and HR teams aren’t happy with the CV they don’t know what the alternative is and if there is one, is it any better?
Driven by digitalisation
The skills mismatch is veering its way into a crisis - but if businesses don’t adopt a different approach to talent identification and hiring, it could be a whole lot worse.
According to the World Economic Forum’s Future Jobs Report (WEF), there’ll be 97m new digital-first jobs by 2025. What’s more, 85m existing jobs will disappear entirely, with the WEF advising that 50% of all employees will need to reskill by 2025.
In a rapidly changing world, if businesses don't change the way they hire, they simply aren't going to fill roles and hit key business goals.
Scrap the CV, and then what?
With the CV gone, how do you decide who to bring forward to interview or the next stage? Well, it starts with a different mindset. In a market where there are insufficient skilled candidates, companies need to broaden the talent pool and look for transferable skills and competencies. Hiring should be about who you ‘screen in’ to the next stage in the process, not who you ‘screen out’ from it. The old approach of putting in hurdles like intelligence tests or video interviews with questions around experience are holding companies back. As are AI approaches which parse CVs looking for connections around job experience to a job description.
To be successful in broadening the talent pool, companies need a method to help identify who has the transferable skills, whether that be empathy, curiosity, conscientiousness or learning agility. This is where new approaches like behaviour based assessments are breaking new ground to reveal potential and discover great candidates overlooked by the traditional CV based approach.
Employers are able to create a ‘Fit Profile’, defining “potential” through a blend of work related competencies suited for that role and company culture. Engaging in a range of interactive tasks, candidates are measured against their fit with these competencies. Those candidates with the strongest potential are easily identified from their higher fit score and can be moved forward to the next stage.
Hiring based on potential and transferable capabilities provides that all important fair and inclusive process, championing diversity and increasing the talent pool.
Scrapping the CV in action
Companies are showcasing the vast benefits of this new approach to their hiring. Take Leyton, for example. As a company that helps businesses maximise their potential and accelerate growth, it seemed only logical that the in-house recruitment team did the same with their own approach to hiring. Rather than relying on the limited information that a CV can provide, Leyton wanted to find, measure and unlock a candidate’s true potential.
So, the team outsourced and turned to the fast emerging behaviour-based assessments (BBAs). The aim was to use a behavioural approach to finding and unlocking potential.
There was a slight resistance at senior level before implementing the BBA, and some employees felt that the way that ‘things have always been done’ was the best way. But the effectiveness of the assessment was the true winner. The BBA was able to identify the most suitable candidates objectively and without bias. Employees recruited through the BBA have since reached their productivity curve (internal measure of success within Leyton) three times faster than their traditional counterparts. Furthermore, the Leyton team was able to reduce their reliance (and with it, fees) on recruitment agencies by 90%!
A new CV-less age
Einstein said “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results” - this is exactly what businesses will be doing if they stick with the CV to meet the great digital skills mismatch.
Companies are willing to change but seem at a loss as to how to identify talent otherwise. Changing mindsets and leveraging technology that values potential over experience has the power to create seismic shifts in the working landscape. It will redefine how we assess talent and match up the skills-job mismatch.
The world is full of highly-capable, talented people ready to be discovered and transitioned into new roles. And, unknown to many, the tools are there to achieve it.
In that regard, the message is simple - there is a better way and put potential over privilege in your hiring process.
