Visual Resumes? Not So Much

Information flow is a huge problem. As the pile of social media data swells, companies are going to have an increasingly difficult time parsing all of the stuff. Then the questions of storage and access come into view.

Quickly, the question is becoming how to contain the spiraling costs of recruiting while adequately vetting the candidate.

At the same time, candidates want to be seen as individuals and really want a chance to tell their stories. Much of the verbalized frustration with the ‘black hole’ and bad candidate experience are really articulations of this need to be heard and respected. The systems that make recruiting possible leave a significant hole in this regard.

But, it’s not the company’s job to make every candidate feel good. Respect can be communicated procedurally and transparency can be a part of the process. But, as long as the company can’t control the number of resumes that it receives, it has to manage those resumes as a net resource drain.

And, that’s the problem with the emerging crop of visual resumes: they take longer to digest, they drive costs up. Visual resumes are an attempt to use pictures and images to beef up the story that a resume tells.

Will job hunters love them? Undoubtedly. Will recruiters hate them? Probably.

re.vu has a very cool interface. You point the tool at your linkedIn profile and it generates your very own personal infographic. Visualize.me does something very similar.

The right place for Visual Resumes is in small settings. If you are trying to get noticed by a little company that doesn’t have enterprise applicant tracking, it might work. The idea is really somewhere between a brochure and a CV so people who need brochures should be able to use the format.

I’m open to hearing someone tell me why these things would work in large companies with Recruiting process automation.

But I just can’t see it.