Employers look for candidates with perfect resumes, but that can backfire:
Directors of summer internship programs, for example, have soured on seemingly “perfect” students with 3.9 grade-point averages from elite schools, who have mastered multiple foreign languages. The reason: these recruits show surprisingly little initiative once they arrive at a big, busy company; they keep waiting to be told what to do. Ultra-rigorous screening of internship candidates has inadvertently eliminated the freewheeling mavericks of previous eras. Those earlier interns might have lacked great transcripts, but they didn’t need anyone’s permission to try something bold.
Small-company chief executive officers voice a similar lament. They are eager to hire lieutenants whose career zigzags have created a burning desire to succeed in a new job. In the boardroom, though, such plans elicit frowns. Directors keep nudging these CEOs to play it safe, filling the management team with steady performers whose work history closely matches the job at hand, even if there’s no sense of “wow!” in the job interviews.
Insist on a perfect resume each time, and it’s impossible to make the most of highly promising candidates with “jagged resumes.” The lost opportunities can be excruciating. Imagine the remorse of a venture capitalist unwilling to back Steve Jobs in 1977, because the personal-computer pioneer never finished college. For that matter, consider Apple’s fate in the 1990s, if the company hadn’t invited Jobs back for a second turn at leading the company, even though his first run ended in dismissal.
In researching The Rare Find, George Anders settled on two key insights:
First, organizations that consider jagged resumes have clear ideas of what high points they must see. Teach for America looks for perseverance. The New England Patriots look for a deep-seated desire to play football, not just to be a famous athlete. Linear Technology looks for tinkerers, who have been experimenting with electrical circuits since childhood.
In all these cases, organizations seize on a few central character traits that are well known internally as future markers of likely success. Such enterprises think harder about which candidates might grow the most on the job, rather than which ones already possess all needed competencies for the task at hand. Traits such as resilience, efficiency, curiosity and self-reliance are among the most likely ones to be prized. This bolder hiring philosophy can be summed up by the maxim: “Compromise on experience. Don’t compromise on character.”
Second, connoisseurs of the jagged resume have well-thought-out ideas about which apparent shortcomings don’t matter (and which ones do.) Hopscotch work histories often are viewed leniently. Quirky personalities and inconsistent grades can be forgiven, too. There’s no forbearance, though for lapses in ethics, an inability to work with people, or a lack of motivation. Jagged-resume hiring can succeed only if the cultural fit between candidate and company is unusually good, so warning flags in that area are taken seriously.