Because part of the information is the representation of the resume itself.
Why isn't there a universal data format for résumés?
161–170 of 472 posts
Re: Why isn't there a universal data format for résumés?
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a hiring manager you’d be inclined to disagree. If resumes could be standardized and easily searchable for information it would help find candidates much more accurately and quickly without having to read. Even better would be if there was a verification standard where you could get a blue checkmark on your resume meaning all the information is accurate and not made up bullshit, then you could limit searches only…
You could probably only try to verify local education - for the foreign education not that easy. Even employment (even local) is very hard if possible at all. For example, I work for a large corp X as a contractor. It pays my agency Y. Y pays my umbrella company Z. Z pays me as its employee. There is hardly an easy way to link me to company X yet I've been there for 9 years.
Half the companies I've worked for have gone out of business or been acquired. Good luck verifying them.
Effective way to select for only young employees, I suppose.
Re: Why isn't there a universal data format for résumés?
#163In my opinion, there shouldn't be. Documents like these shouldn't be automatically processed, they should be reviewed by humans. Reducing someone's life history to a list of educational institutions and employers feels robotic even for a software developer's mindset. I understand that there are real life problems because companies do use automated processing on applications, but that kind of behaviour shouldn't be en…
>Documents like these shouldn't be automatically processed, they should be reviewed by humans. That's very nice to think about but in the real world if people don't match some exact keywords they get thrown away. HR is looking for "node.js" but you wrote it like "nodejs"? Though luck pal, bye. HR wants a "computer scientist" but you have a degree in "computer science"? Same, automatically discarded. If anything, a st…
New opportunities: Just as "medical coder" is now a profession (related to insurance filing), we could have "resume coder" as a profession.
Re: Why isn't there a universal data format for résumés?
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe I understand your point – therefore I would like to take this opportunity to channel something that 'patio11 wrote on Twitter many years ago: “Do not send in a job application before you have an actual human being who has expressed enthusiasm for reading or forwarding it.”[0] I believe this is sound advice, and the pitfalls you mentioned was probably the reasons that he gave this advice. [0] https://twitter…
That's a good advice but probably for the top X percent in their industry who have a luxury to choose their employer - not everyone is in this position.
Indeed, I first heard this advice in the form: Don't submit a resume until you are sure you have the job.
Re: Why isn't there a universal data format for résumés?
#165In my opinion, there shouldn't be. Documents like these shouldn't be automatically processed, they should be reviewed by humans. Reducing someone's life history to a list of educational institutions and employers feels robotic even for a software developer's mindset. I understand that there are real life problems because companies do use automated processing on applications, but that kind of behaviour shouldn't be en…
Currently they are automatically processed - poorly.
Re: Why isn't there a universal data format for résumés?
#166I used to work in ontologies, and what I learned is that people would rather get an 80% heuristic solution for dirty data rather than a 100% correct solution for data they have to clean. The big job sites have resume parsers that work well enough from a PDF or Word doc, and then they don't have to worry about you forgetting a close tag or a mandatory field. Sure, stuff gets lost, but they get 80% of a billion resumes…
Hence RSO: Resume Search Optimization
Re: Why isn't there a universal data format for résumés?
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a hiring manager you’d be inclined to disagree. If resumes could be standardized and easily searchable for information it would help find candidates much more accurately and quickly without having to read. Even better would be if there was a verification standard where you could get a blue checkmark on your resume meaning all the information is accurate and not made up bullshit, then you could limit searches only…
> If resumes could be standardized and easily searchable for information it would help find candidates much more accurately and quickly without having to read. I see how that can be useful from the recruiting side of the table, but fail to see how the candidate benefits.
Think back to the first time you wrote a resume. For me and all of my college buddies at least, it was super stressful, because we had no idea what it was supposed to look like and nothing but vague rumors to go on. If there were a straightforward canonical answer for how my resume should be formatted it would have saved me quite a bit of work and quite a bit of stress that I was doing it wrong.
Re: Why isn't there a universal data format for résumés?
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a good advice but probably for the top X percent in their industry who have a luxury to choose their employer - not everyone is in this position.
It's not about picking your employer so much as it is about getting past the outer layer and in touch with an interested human who can champion you through the rest of the process. In the absence of a pre-existing relationship, a good recruiter is invaluable for this.
Recruiters can definitely be a good way. That’s how I landed, like, nearly every job I have ever been offered.
Networking and reaching out to people at interesting companies is another way.
You will probably still have to write a cover letter and send in your résumé. But if you have someone on the inside who will mention to the hiring manager that, ”hey, you should check out Jane’s application” it will probably make a great deal of difference compared to just applying and hoping for the best.
And please folks, remember that FAANG is not the only game in town. There are lots and lots and lots of other companies out there, and many of them also pay well since they need to compete with FAANG to at least some extent.
Re: Why isn't there a universal data format for résumés?
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a good advice but probably for the top X percent in their industry who have a luxury to choose their employer - not everyone is in this position.
Indeed, I first heard this advice in the form: Don't submit a resume until you are sure you have the job.
TBH that sounds a little extreme in the other direction.
Re: Why isn't there a universal data format for résumés?
#170There are three different common standards: HR Open Standards Candidate, schema.org and JSON Resume. HROS (which does XML and JSON) is used as a data exchange format between enterprise ATS and HRIS it's very comprehensive and is very detailed (perhaps too detailed). Schema.org seems mostly like Google and friends just making something up (without even trying to work with other existing standards) and trying to get everyone to use it. JSON resume is about what it sounds like it is. Oh, and then there are various de facto standards where ATSes that work with job boards like Indeed or data vendors like People Data Labs... So there's a lot of standards. The problem is:
a good standard is one everyone uses.
Personal opinion: resumes are actually kind of hard. I've personally been involved in HR Open Standards and even though it is a very complete standard, it's still hard to map real world resumes into the format sometimes. There is a shocking amount of ambiguity, and a shocking amount of adjacent standards (some of those have been adopted) for describing work history, education, certifications, people and workplaces.
So... most of the industry just parses resumes into some internal schema, and a lot of employers make job seekers enter their education and history on a job application form so they get it their way. It's really messy. Hope that helps.