For a long time now, the CV has been at the centre of any job application, recruiters charged with scrutinising them, and potential employees ensuring that their chances for employment are well represented in their personal documents.
However, is the CV on its way out as technology takes over and sites like LinkedIn have become the digital marketplace for employment?
It seems that the jury is still very much out on the matter, with employers in the main, still using the CV as the first point of reference when seeking to recruit. However, as the world becomes increasingly driven by technological innovation, businesses are evolving which seek to take the burden of recruitment off employers by mechanising the process.
The start-up company Shortlist, for example, which came into being as a solution to the most time-consuming and expensive part of the recruitment process, uses predictive chat-based interviews and online competency-based assessments to filter out the wheat from the chaff for their clients.
An initial assessment by Shortlist, rates candidates’ appropriateness by a set of simple artificial intelligence algorithms, analysing location, salary expectations and experience and is finding its service is becoming increasingly popular. While this particular company only currently operates out of India and East Africa, cutting its business teeth on one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, should give it a major advantage across the world in future.
While many would consider that battling an algorithm was yet another pressure on the already daunted prospective employee, the inherent success of company’s like Shortlist also forecast their inevitable failure.
Although employers may embrace the time consuming and labour intensive filtration of CV’s, the fact that a company has developed a system to circumnavigate this process means the by the time it reaches these shores, there is likely to be an alternative company who will work on the applicant’s behalf supplying a formula to answer these computer-generated questions.
As computer geek fights computer geek from opposite ends of the problem, employers will be scratching their heads as to the worth of these new-fangled tests and could well go back to the good ol’ CV and human filtration of them.
So in answer to our original question, is the CV on the way out? It seems that for the foreseeable future that its role at the heart of the business is grounded in trust and longevity, and it is going to take a very long time before employers trust the new technology more than the human mind.
This is, of course, is not only good news for current HR departments, but predicts future employment opportunities in the sector.
In conclusion, it is still invaluable to keep your CV current and to maximise its impact by taking time and effort in its construction, however laborious. And while you’re at it be aware of the merit of a dazzling covering letter, which although archaic in technological terms, is still at the heart of the way in which to catch the eye of a living and breathing HR individual.