Find a job without a CV: it’s possible!
Recruitment without a CV is one of the most innovative recruitment methods. Here is a closer look at this type of recruitment that prefers to put forward skills and personal qualities rather than the chronology of a career.
Recruiting a candidate without having seen his or her CV seems at first glance to be a big risk. However, this innovative approach can be interesting for both recruiters and candidates. Discover the 5 advantages of recruiting without a CV.
- 1- Focus on transferable skills
Recruitment without a CV is based on skills as opposed to diplomas. When we talk about skills, we are talking about a broader vision of skills, i.e. skills that are transversal and transferable from one type of position to another.
Careers are no longer linear, and candidates’ careers will be increasingly marked by this reality. It is time to adapt recruitment methods, otherwise recruiters risk missing out on golden profiles.
Focusing on cross-functional competencies means looking at the whole person and taking into consideration skills acquired in a professional as well as personal context. Hobbies are sometimes as important as professional experience.
- 2- Recruiting without a CV limits the halo effect
The halo effect, in recruitment, occurs when a recruiter focuses on certain information to the detriment of others. Typically in this case, it is a recruiter who focuses on the degree (“I need a 5-year degree from a business school”) to the detriment of a relevant skill in the field.
The consequence is negative for the candidate as well as for the company since the candidate will be rejected for this simple reason without his profile being really studied.
- 3- Hiring highly motivated people
Recruiting without a CV allows the recruiter to change his or her attitude and move from a logic of experience to a logic of motivation.
It opens the door of the recruitment process to different profiles, such as people who have already worked in the profession but without a diploma, or people undergoing professional retraining.
The candidate to whom the company offers a chance is generally grateful and highly motivated. Unlike more traditional profiles, they have gone through difficulties that they have been able to overcome and do not apply to a company by chance.
- 4- Encourage a more objective presentation
Recruiting without a CV allows you to move away from the logic of knowledge to a logic of being. Indeed, a CV is a subjective tool: it reflects what the candidate has chosen (sometimes badly) to put forward and therefore what the recruiter will see (and deduce). It is a biased tool in itself.
For some profiles, the CV stage is very complex, even though these candidates have the perfect skills for a job.
On the other hand, recruiting without a CV allows the candidate to present themselves more objectively and in a more “complete” way: their personality, their operational know-how, their strengths, their aspirations, their values, their social and behavioural qualities, etc.
Recruitment without a CV offers recruiters infinitely richer and more complex applications.
- 5- Reaching the invisible candidates
What do we mean by invisible candidates? These are all potentially promising candidates who are excluded from the recruitment process, due to several factors.
– First, when a specific degree is required to apply. The candidate has the required experience, the personality that matches the company’s values, yet he or she is automatically eliminated because he or she does not have the degree mentioned in the job offer.
– The second example is the experience required for the position. The candidate has all the assets to perform well but lacks one year of experience to reach the minimum five years required in the ad.
In these cases, recruiting without a resume provides the flexibility needed to obtain these promising candidates.
Recruitment without a CV is currently practiced in two different ways:
- Pôle emploi has introduced its simulation-based recruitment method. This method consists of evaluating the “skills” that are essential for a position and then subjecting candidates to exercises that will reveal whether or not they have these skills.
- Another method proposed by Apec, among others, consists in sending candidates a questionnaire with 25 to 30 items specific to the position to be filled. Like the simulation recruitment method, this questionnaire aims to evaluate the candidates’ skills, but also their personality, their motivation…
Other more creative recruitment methods have emerged in recent years, such as video recruitment, social recruiting, challenges or even recruitment games.
Whatever the method used, recruitment without a resume consists of evaluating the technical AND behavioural skills of the candidates, in real conditions.
In conclusion, recruiting without a CV is an interesting practice, particularly in order to limit judgments and preconceived ideas about an application and attract new profiles. Nevertheless, a solid strategy must be put in place to analyse the questionnaires and pre-selection methods. Finally, once the candidates have been pre-selected, the CV often remains an indispensable tool for finalizing the recruitment.
