Resumes 2.0

Your resume is an ever-expanding story, if you will, of your career path. I would try to pull in a never-ending story reference, but I think that could turn a little too dark when we get to retirement.

Mind you, I said “ever-expanding”. Not “new.” Not “off-shoot.”

Why do I point this out? Because you have no idea how many times I've come across applicants who have applied multiple times with resumes that are 100% different from their prior incarnation. In fact, this just happened to me recently, though it made me look like a complete fool, so I'm rather pissed about the entire thing.

I sent a candidate name to a client for a particular job, but it flagged in their ATS (applicant tracking system) as a duplicate. Said another way: that person was already in the client system as having applied in the past. Following standard protocol, I reached out to my contact to see if the person was eligible for re-submittal. For context, candidates stay in the system forever but are usually up for reconsideration after a certain amount of time has passed.

I received an email back stating that the person in question was, in fact, eligible for resubmittal as it had been about two years since he initially applied. However, the application had been previously rejected due to sporadic work history, and my contact asked if I was willing to send the resume over for her to perform a brief review.

I had no issues doing so.

Several minutes later, Yours Truly learned the resume I sent over was entirely different from the one my customer had on file for the same person (defined as the same name and contact information).

I dug through our system files and found an old resume the candidate submitted to us a couple of years prior and compared all three work histories. The name and email address remained constant, as well as one job from six years ago. Interestingly, there was also one job on all three with the same company and same job description, but all had different dates of employment (DOE).

Embarrassed, I had to admit the candidate I sent and the one she had on file were, in fact, the same person. I did not feel obligated to disclose that we had a third work history to contend with if so inclined (I was not so inclined). Instead, I DNU’d the candidate and nursed my wounded pride by snapping at the next few people that stopped by my desk that afternoon.

Can't believe anything anyone says. It's no wonder I don't trust anybody.

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