The Ballad of Candidate Data: It's not the recruiters, it's the regulations

The latest #HRTechChat took on the idea of JASS--job applicant self-service--which turned, as it often does, into the same-old-same-old conversation of "the resume is dying," and that social has killed it, and why are recruiters and HR people still insisting on resumes, those old fuddy duddies!

This is absolutely a case of don't hate the player, hate the game.

Working outside a traditional resume and application paradigm might work for a small company and/or one that only hires for a few openings a year. Or the very rare exemptions to EEOC and OFCCP

But the reality, especially for the largest employers, is that a consistent application process with data handling standards and the ability to mine a candidate database is still crucial to recruiting success.

There will always be the need for candidates to provide data to potential employers, and for recruiters to search that data to find the best fit for their openings quickly, easily and (especially!) in a way that's legally compliant.

But that doesn't mean we're stuck with the same old stodgy resume and application formats. The best recruiting tech providers (disclosure: I obviously include Talent Technology in this group) and the most forward-thinking employers are building and adopting technologies that allow candidates to apply with profiles and work samples they already use.

We're finally seeing the ability for candidates to apply with LinkedIn or Facebook profiles, and as talent networks develop further we'll see functionality for candidates to append their electronic applications with websites and portfolio samples without manual intervention from recruiting staff.

But none of this negates the need for a succinct summary of a candidate's skills and experience (excluding those pesky compliance-busters like race, gender, age, disability, etc.), in a format that's available for uploading, extracting, parsing and searching. We may not always call it a resume, but the dataset isn't going anywhere.