Don’t update your résumé — it’s already a dinosaur

Remember eight-track tapes? Polyester leisure suits? Beer-can openers?

The printed paper résumé — long the standard way to apply for a white-collar job — may soon join those once-ubiquitous products in history’s dustbin.

If you haven’t applied for a job lately, you may be surprised. If you have applied for just about any position in a midsized or large company, you know what’s happening.

Instead of reading your résumé, an employer may ask you to fill out an online form or take an online test that measures how well you “fit” the job, based on responses from successful workers.

The Google company, for example, uses a screening program to measure applicants’ attitudes, behaviors, personality and biographical details. Answers are scrunched in a formula that creates a score, indicating how well the candidate is likely to fare on the job.

“It’s getting harder to sell yourself for a job you think you’re qualified for,” said Steve Murphy, a 48-year-old job hunter from Lenexa, who’s been surprised at all the electronic hoops he’s had to jump through before nabbing interviews. In most cases, he said, “You’re just able to post online.”

“It’s all electronic,” agreed Michael Doyle, a 60-year-old job seeker from Prairie Village, who recently landed a job through personal contacts. In nine months, Doyle said, he’d spoken to exactly two interviewers as a result of online postings.

Murphy, Doyle and applicants like them discovered that résumés have gone digital. Forget worrying about what kind of paper stock to use. You probably won’t need it.

In some cases, résumés have disappeared from the hiring process completely. Some employers don’t even want them in digitized format. They prefer customized online forms, tailor-made to cull the applicant field.

Some human-resource gurus suggest the personal interview could be next on the endangered-species list.

John Sullivan, a management professor at San Francisco State University, says most interviews are as valuable as Ouija boards in measuring whether a person will be good on the job.

Interviewers ask the wrong questions, and job candidates can lie or simply not shine, when on the job they’d do quite well, he says — all the better for online assessments.

Companies — especially those that hire thousands of workers and have high turnover — are turning to a range of computer-based filters to pare down candidates to a manageable number.

At AMC Entertainment, for example, the company is introducing questions about availability, work eligibility, desired pay, qualifications and pertinent awards in the online application process, said Keith Wiedenkeller, senior vice president-human resources.

The new screening software allows an interview, when it’s offered, “to be more streamlined and efficient,” with just five or six basic questions needed, mostly of the “tell me about a time when you resolved a difficult customer service situation” variety, he said.

Even smaller companies, where résumés still are accepted, have purchased screening software.

John Rocholl, Kansas City general manager of ADP TotalSource, has small-business clients that still read paper résumés, but they’ve also purchased screening software because “they don’t want to waste time talking to individuals who aren’t qualified.”

Employers are buying a range of screening services that cost as little as $1 or less per applicant, up to $150 or more per applicant, Rocholl said.

An increasingly popular screening tool uses a kind of standardized test. Applicants’ answers to questions — about such characteristics as their preferred noise level at work or the time of day they feel most energized — are compared to answers from workers who already are successful in the jobs.

Theoretically, that measurement is good for both applicants and employers, said Todd Rafael, editor in chief of ERE (previously Electronic Recruiting Exchange), a provider of recruiting information.

“Employers are asking anywhere from three questions to a very expensive battery online,” Rafael said. “Some have interactive game-type situations, some have work simulations.”

Other employers are using LinkedIn and other social networking sites to get candidate recommendations and referrals, on the theory that friends and contacts of employees might be good hiring bets.

Some companies will even accept video résumés. Jobster, Facebook, Vault, HireVue and Resumevideo are among sites that have or will soon have video résumé tools online.

Many job hunters are frustrated at the digitized “depersonalization” of the hiring process. Few are as discontent, though, as Michael Rosenthal, an Overland Park resident, who has waged an all-out campaign, contacting congressmen, state legislators and others he thinks might stem the online filtering tide.

“I can spend three hours online, taking I.Q. tests, being categorized, taking personality tests, and never know if I’m a viable candidate,” Rosenthal said.

“Then I have no individual access to the data, no ability to retrieve it, and I don’t know where else that information might go. How is it safeguarded? It just feels wrong. If you can’t get a face-to-face interview, I don’t think all this personal information should be sought.”

But many in the human-resource industry are glad online screening tools exist.

“There’s no way anymore to filter qualified applicants by just looking for buzzwords on résumés,” said Darren Dupriest, president of Validity Screening Solutions, a security and background checking company in Overland Park.

“Applicants may be upset, but I see no resolution in sight,” Dupriest said. “We’ve sacrificed face-to-face for efficiency. The cost of a bad hire is too great.”

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