Title and resume inflation are the bane of most recruiters and hiring managers. Although it is an universally accepted fact that most candidates “lie somewhat” or “lie a lot” on their resume, its extremely difficult to sift the “blatant lie” from the “exaggerated lie”.
Which is why I am very positive on LinkedIn’s new announcement (link). They are offering a plug-in for employer websites called “Apply with LinkedIn”, which will allow job candidates to apply for available positions using their LinkedIn profiles as resumes.
Having a public, open profile with correct titles (still sometimes inflated) which your coworkers and HR professionals within your organization can view, leaves little room for misrepresentations.
I dont think this will remove the need for resumes, though since we still need a list of detailed accomplishments, which most people won’t post on LinkedIn. Many of these accomplishments will be company confidential in nature, which company officials will not be comfortable with candidates publishing online.
As an example, if a Marketing manager at a company says on their LinkedIn profile, she improved conversion rates by 23%, with publicly available information any competitor can determine the company’s (private) revenues and customer conversions.
Brings me to a question though:
If these detailed accomplishments are “company confidential” in the first place, why would companies allow for those to be on resumes? Is it only because companies cannot (or are not able to) review all their employee’s resumes?
What’s your take?
