Recruiting without a CV: between the evolution of the recruitment market and the opportunity to stand out!

The CV is seen today as an essential tool in the recruitment process. It is the primary point of contact between the candidate and the recruiter, and sometimes the last when the candidate’s “resume” is rejected.

But does the recruiter really still need a CV to recruit?

HR Strategy

rgpd and hr data

By Soufiane MAÏNE

HRIS Consultant

Recruitment methods without CVs

To shake up the traditional recruitment process, some companies are exploring new avenues by launching CV-free recruitment initiatives, for example AdeccoMcDonalds, Ikea, Lyreco or companies in the automotive sector.

In France more specifically, there are methods of recruitment without a CV, practiced in two ways:

  • Pôle emploi, which has implemented the MRS method (Method of Recruitment by Simulation) to evaluate the skills required for the position.
  • APEC offers another method which consists of sending candidates a questionnaire specific to the position to be filled. Its objective is to evaluate skills, interpersonal skills and motivation.

More generally, we are still often recruiting with a mandatory cover letter. For example, I recently saw an ad in a RATP bus with the mention CV & LM required for a driver position.

With this introduction, and before getting to the heart of the matter, I would like to give a brief overview of the state of the art concerning the recruitment function.

The experience of the employee in the recruitment process without a CV

In a recruitment market marked by a Stop & Go and above all a “war/retention of Talents”, the balance of power between the company and the candidate seems to be reversed or at least rebalanced. Attracting talent without asking for their resume is a warning sign to confirm this trend. Seen in another way, this allows a company to considerably reduce the recruitment time, knowing that studies and figures vary on the time spent by the recruiter to read a candidate CV and to decide to follow up on his application: on average this time is estimated between 1mn40 and 3 mn.

It is a question of changing the paradigm: we must attract candidates and consider them, as we do with clients, in an approach that emphasizes the “Client Experience in the recruitment process”.

This is also true internally for the employees of companies where it is a question of retention of employees, in this case we speak of Employee Experience. Still making the analogy with Marketing, building customer loyalty means offering new attractive services/products, treating them properly… For the employee, it means for example offering new career paths or functional/geographical mobility, taking an interest in QWL so that they feel good in their work, etc.

CV-free recruitment: risk or opportunity?

To answer this question, we must analyze several elements:

The company that recruits

  1. Its size: SMEs and VSEs do not necessarily have the means to process applications en masse and to afford high-performance HR tools to automate the selection of candidates, and therefore the CV.
  2. Its sector of activity: some professions of manpower/TP (Driver/deliveryman/salesman…) in shortage do not really require a course in the form of CV, but rather soft skills.

Type of position

For positions where mass recruitment is very common, it may be appropriate to dispense with the CV. Nevertheless, for certain sensitive senior management positions, the CV will remain essential to assess the relevance of the candidate’s background to the position, and especially to the criticality of the position within the organization.

The applicant who applies

The CV is a personal marketing tool for the candidate, but this is especially true when he or she has a significant career path .

For a Junior profile, his CV is only his diploma, which is not necessarily a concrete element regarding the suitability of the position for the recruiter, even if some French companies prefer graduates of certain engineering or business schools in the recruitment of their profiles.

A CV remains a document whose information must be verified… so why not do it in an interview with a more human contact. There is also a bias induced by the recruiter when processing resumes, with the risk of discrimination. Hence the emergence of the “Blind Recruitment” approach where personal information is excluded from the CV.

The digital recruitment ecosystem

Thesourcing methods are very varied: Job board, LinkedIn, and other social networks. If we focus more specifically on LinkedIn, its strength lies in the following aspects:

  • Dynamic: compared to the CV which is frozen in time, the LinkedIn profile moves, the experience is updated, the candidate can put information that will not be found in his CV: soft skills/recommendations/centers of interest…
  • Without constraints of RGPD compared to the CV where it is a question of 2 years of retention of personal data.
  • Unlimited pool of profiles on a variety of profiles, with a global geographic location.
  • Free for the candidate, allowing him/her to match with companies that were not in the radar of his/her research, offering him/her career evolutions based on skills. If the recruiter uses this matching in his HRIS (paying option), this could be a real opportunity for both parties.

On this last point, we are seeing more and more HCM solutions like Oracle interfacing with LinkedIn to retrieve similar profiles in the HRIS database or allowing the candidate to apply with the LinkedIn profile instead of his or her resume.

In short, recruiting without a CV can be a real opportunity to meet the recruitment challenges of 2022 and those of the future.

Learn more about our HRIS solutions

Some techniques to make your recruitment without a CV successful

Knowing your values For example, SQORUS assists its clients with HR projects of this type to help them define, understand and promote their company’s values.

  • Implementing Assessment/ Video Interview solutions.
  • Standardize your processes by using an ATS solution.
  • And others, depending on your business needs…

To conclude, recruiting without a CV is an HRD strategy strategy that is part of an HR & HRIS project project in its own right, requiring a preliminary study on 4 main levels:

  1. Process & Organization: how to readjust the candidate selection process? How to restructure my teams and my sourcing strategy?
  2. Business: what will it bring to HR business teams?
  3. SI: How to manage the application in the ATS?
  4. Change management: how to support HR/Managers teams in changing this practice.

Learn more about our HR Council and Strategy offer

If you are interested in the subject of CV-free recruitment and would like to be accompanied in this process, please do not hesitate to contact us.

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