Your Résumé Is Not Your Life

Everyone wants to hire the “right person for the job.” But that “right person” might not already work for you or have the specific background that you think you need.

How do you know if you are hiring or promoting the right person if your sourcing is limited to your centers of influence and based on criteria that have been the same for decades? If you are searching for an innovative, problem-solving employee with a strong work ethic, the hiring process should reflect that preferred outcome.

Historical recruitment and promotion practices, which typically focus on education and job title, continue to fall short of closing the opportunity gap for those with non-traditional backgrounds, and they limit a company’s ability to truly find the right person for the job. While education and work experience are important, creativity and openness in sourcing candidates are the key to grounding your hiring decisions in equity without using quotas and metrics. Some employers seem to fear those approaches may be used against them—perhaps understandably so, given the politicized attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), like the July 2023 letter in which 13 Republican state attorneys general indicated to Fortune 100 companies that DEI is a form of racial discrimination that could open the corporations to legal action.

One way to be intentional in this regard is learning how to correlate candidates’ lived experiences to the skills required for the job. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services cites lived experience as “knowledge based on someone’s perspective, personal identities, and history, beyond their professional or educational experience.” For example, veterans, stay-at-home parents and generally any individuals who have overcome adversity all bring valuable skills and perspectives to the table that they may not have learned in a classroom or textbook.

Traditional résumé reviews and keyword searching are antiquated and lazy ways of screening candidates. This remains true even when using computer algorithms that rely solely on formulaic approaches that don’t “read” the experience that lies between the lines of the résumé. Removing mandatory years of experience and required higher educational degrees from job descriptions and advertisements is a straightforward way to expand your talent pool and naturally increase the diversity of applicants. Ask yourself, “Is that degree necessary or simply nice to have?” With the current global talent shortage, combined with the fact that the U.S. Census Bureau said in 2021 that roughly 62% of adult Americans don’t hold a bachelor’s degree, shouldn’t we at least consider taking it easy on the nice-to-haves?

Biases can also sneak in when evaluating employees for promotions. Promotions are typically based on two factors: past performance and future potential. While past performance is mostly objective, predicting potential is a bit more precarious because it is not possible to predict future actions. It is important to fight the psychology behind seeing potential in employees who resemble you when considering internal candidates for leadership positions. Are there less-obvious employees who might not have the optimal job title but are actively and successfully demonstrating the skills and attributes necessary for the role?

Skill-based hiring refers to incorporating lived experiences that will lead to more diverse companies. When crafting skill-based job ads, it is important to make clear what skills will be necessary on day one and what skills can be developed over time in the role. This allows potential applicants to feel less intimidated in applying for the position.

The tricky part in all of this is then facilitating a job interview that uncovers the desired attributes for success without needing them spelled out for you in the standard résumé bullet points citing degrees or fancy titles. Alternately, organizational consultant Korn Ferry suggests focusing candidate interviews on skills like creativity, problem-solving, ability to comprehend and retain complex information, and collaboration.

Until corporate succession plans include diverse pipelines of candidates, it is essential to cast a wider net and look beyond the obvious pools of employees if you want to disrupt the current homogeneous C-suite within the brokerage industry.

Companies that are willing to make these shifts in recruiting will undoubtedly garner the proven business benefits of a more diverse and inclusive workplace culture that values talent over titles.