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Enemy at the Gates
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get the company’s attention and an invitation for an interview.
From the company’s perspective, the résumé is an initial screen.
Someone—usually an HR staff member—has to read all the résumés
and whittle down the stack to those few that appear to be from
viable candidates. Résumés are grouped into qualified, marginally
qualified, not qualified, and, sometimes, overqualified. Ideally, a
small number of viable résumés will be presented to the hiring manager,
and then only a handful of candidates will be selected for further
consideration.
SCREENING RÉSUMÉS
The major weakness in using a résumé as a screening device is, of
course, the tendency for applicants to overstate or falsify their qualifications.
It is common knowledge among executive recruiters that
many of all executive résumés contain some form of distortion or
outright lies—and these are the norm. Most of the exaggerations are
in the areas of background experience and education. Some applicants
claim more responsibility, greater financial accountability, enhanced
job titles, and higher-level reporting relationships than they
really had. Some pad their résumé with fake years of service, slurring
dates to cover gaps that they cannot explain or jobs they wish to
forget.
Fictional Résumés
“You can’t argue with the written word,” noted Pogo, an animal
character in Walt Kelly’s comic strip, popular with college
students several decades ago. The same folk wisdom was evident
in a humorous radio dialogue of the same era, which used as
proof of various assertions, “It’s in the book!” Unfortunately, the
belief that if it is in writing it must be true is alive and well when
it comes to evaluating an impressive-looking résumé. Surveys by