If you’re hiring for an open position and are ready to select from a list of candidates, who are your you likely to choose -the candidate with a fancy resume or the one with a chalky resume but a tough background; both being equally qualified. Looks like an easy decision to make right..? But if you dig deeper, it may not be so black & white.
HR Expert, Regina Hartley, tells you why hiring the latter might just be the right thing to do.
After studying and dealing with people for years, Regina finds that the most successful people in the world are the ones who don’t have the conventional resume, who’ve faced hardships while growing up and who’ve had to fight against all odds to reach where they are today.
She and her team came up with two categories to best describe the 2 types of candidates-Silver Spoons & Scrapper.
Silver Spoons are the luckier ones, who’ve had the opportunity to undergo formal education, and come from distinguished families, while the scrappers come from broken homes, who’ve had to face alcoholism, violence and inconsistent or complete lack of formal education.
What makes them special is that they reach where they are not despite all this, but rather because of all this.
Regina observes that the candidates with fancy resumes come with certain expectations and are not really ready to do odd jobs like something as basic paperwork/or manual work to better understand an operation/function at the workplace.
Their less fortunate counterparts have already seen the worst and so go all out when it comes to achieving the best results for themselves and their team.
There’s no turning back for them, as their journey from the very beginning has been tough enough, and they view every kind of job as a step towards the betterment of life.
“A resume tells you a story”, says Regina who after years of experience had understood that the resume doesn’t tell you enough. “A series of odd jobs may indicate inconsistency, lack of focus, unpredictability or it may signal a committed struggle against obstacles, at the very least the Scrapper deserves an interview.”, says Regina who herself is a Scrapper.
Regina Hartley urges human resource experts to go beyond the resume and give people a chance who’ve not been engineered towards success throughout their entire life but instead have been at the receiving end of dysfunctional families or at times even learning disabilities. She drives this point strongly as she cites Steve Jobs, (who suffered from LD) as an example.
So, HR DIrectors if you’re reading this, you might want to rethink the power you bestow upon a resume. Remember, a piece of paper can’t tell you what human experience or passion can.
