Standardized Resumes

By Frank Mulligan, RecruitChina

The latest news from LinkedIn is that they have now republished their subscriberís public profiles using hResume.

This a microformat and can simply be seen as a standard way for presenting the information in a resume, and for transferring it to others without loss of that information. There are a number of contenders for title of ëStandard Resume Formatí but no format has won this particular war yet. Itís a lot like the battle between Blueray and HD-DVD.

The good news is that LinkedInís decision may have suddenly kick-started the process towards a common resume format. Linkedin have over 9 million users and most donít turn of their Public Profile. So, Hey Presto!, we have close to 9 million hResume formatted Resumes in the market. If the other social software sites follow we could be close to 20 million very soon.

The hResume schema is still a little shy of a proper profile but it includes a short summary, the candidateís contact information, work experience, educational achievements and the candidateís affiliations. Thatís enough to be getting on with.

Here in China we could be looking at another leapfrog situation where companies adopt the hResume format and skip quickly through the email and WORD format. With so many people in China online, and no existing barrier to adopting this process, it might just happen.

The picture that this paints is a good one for Recruiters and candidates. At some time in the future, after hResume becomes standard for everyone, people seeking jobs will be able to send their resume to a company with one click of a mouse. They will build their resume once and send it repeatedly. No more pasting information into fields on a online form, and no more emailing resumes to companies.

They also might have a blog and switch their status from ëemployedí to ëjob seekingí so that spiders searching the web can find them and pass on their information to search engines etc. From there they can easily be found by Recruiters.

Taking it further, some Recruiters might send out their own spiders to search for hResume formatted resumes and input them directly into their Applicant Tracking System. Then when a suitable hiring requisition is approved the candidate is already in the companyís database and the Recruiter can call them directly.

If only it were all so easy.

Now letís see if we can do the same for job postings. Given sufficient levels of integration, we could be looking at the end of recruitment portals if this one works, but more on this later.

Email: frank.mulligan@recruit-china.com