Why firms don’t rely on CVs when recruiting staff

While many job applications require an applicant to send them a curriculum vitae (CV), a new recruitment firm in Kenya now says CVs do not matter.

Shortlist East Africa, which emphasises the use of technology and human touch to understand job-seekers’ skills, says attitude and motivation fuel better hiring outcomes for employers across East Africa.

“We decided that a CV does not matter because we met candidates whose CVs weren’t that good but were so talented. We also met candidates whose CVs were amazing but they didn’t see themselves as amazing,” said Shortlist East Africa Managing Director Arianne Fisher.

“There are so many hard working, smart, talented people whose CVS may not tell you the story of who they are.”

Fisher’s firm is just among the few in the market such as BrighterMonday, MyJobsKenya among others.

Shortlist recently closed its Sh200 million Series A financing led by Blue Haven Ventures, with participation from Zephyr Acorn, Compass Venture Capital, Potencia Ventures, and others.

Fisher observed that they work with hundreds of companies that have accepted their new mode of recruitment.

“Our success rate for the past three years is now higher than the traditional CV recruiters because we have better data about the candidate than just a CV and because of this, our clients are able to make better decisions while recruiting their staff,” added Fisher.

She notes that they concentrate on practical project management skills, critical thinking skills, communications skills while recruiting job seekers.

Rather than a CV, the company teaches candidates to do the online skills-based assessment.

“For instance, when we are recruiting an accountant, we will give him or her a balance sheet to do a series of tasks based on that. We are not just assessing you on how good your are as mentioned in the CVs but how good you are to apply those mentioned skills in the CV into real practical work,” said Fisher.

Shortlist boss says its time recruiters stop asking job seekers to tell them what they are good at but ask them to show how good they are in what they are saying.

Fisher was in the list of this year’s edition of Forbes Magazine’s 30 under 30 for her efforts to make the hiring of talent easier for employers and job seekers.

She says use of CVs has become obsolete since many recruiters don’t care which university or college, how many universities one went but the practical abilities and skills to perform the task one is recruited for.

Fisher sees this as the next way forward for recruiting job seekers in Kenya. She has been collaborating with local human resource managers and practitioners through training, who are fortunately seeing the truth that the CVs are not telling a lot about the job seekers.

“The human resource managers according to our interaction with them, said they are excited to have better data about the job seeker.

She notes that every chief executive officer knows that a CV is not good enough to tell about the job seeker but unfortunately, there is no one to tell them that there is the right method to know the job seeker. “That’s why we come in to fill this gap,” said Fisher.

She advises job seekers to focus on their LinkedIn profile because most people look at it than a CV.