5 reasons you should recruit without cv

Do you really dare to recruit without a CV?

No employer wants to deliberately discriminate against job seekers or let prejudices control who is hired. According to a report from TNG, a majority of Swedish managers and CEOs demand more diversity in their organizations, and a whopping 84% see open-minded recruitment as a way to get there. Yet it seems difficult to achieve in practice: 75% still rely on their gut feeling when hiring.

Comprehensive personality and intelligence tests, as well as anonymized CVs, are some of the tools that today’s employers use to obtain more objective evidence for their recruitment decisions. The question is whether that makes it unnecessarily complicated for yourself. Instead of adding more steps and tools, why not remove unnecessary elements? For those of you who are still hesitant to recruit without a CV and personal letter (or find it difficult to get the rest of the organization on board) – here are five good reasons to make the change.

1. It’s a faster way for the candidates to apply

Today it often takes several hours for a job seeker to submit a job application. First, they must write a CV and personal letter, which are tailored to the position in question. This step alone requires a lot of time in front of the computer (especially if they want to layout the documents nicely to stand out from the crowd). If they are lucky, they then “just” need to attach the files in an email to the company. Otherwise, they first need to register an account on the company’s career page, or on an external platform. There they have to answer a series of different questions, just so that in the last step they can upload their CV and personal letter (which contains roughly the same information as the questions previously answered).

Isn’t it a bit bold to expect hours of unpaid work from someone who isn’t even employed yet? And also of a large number of people who will not even be called to an initial interview? Significantly more effective would be a seamless recruitment process, without CVs and personal letters, where candidates easily will be re-directed from the job advertisement and answer a few carefully selected questions that determine whether they move on to the next step or not. It would cut the time it takes to apply for a job to about ten minutes.

2. It’s much faster for the employer to look through all the applications

Less formal qualifications required for an advertised job, the more applications the company usually receives. Store and warehouse jobs, for example, can generate hundreds of applications that need to be reviewed and administered to find the best-suited candidate.

As an employer, you should want as many applications as possible for each advertised position. It increases the chances of finding really good candidates! However, by requiring CVs and personal letters during the recruitment, you increase the workload for HR (or the hiring manager) with each new applicant. With document-free recruitment, the number of applicants can be maximized without this leading to additional jobs. Tailored selection questions and short tests give each candidate a clear score for the recruiter to rank and judge.

3. The process becomes more equal

Is the person who writes the best CV and personal letter always the one who should be hired for the job? And how do you even know that a candidate has written all parts of their application themselves? CVs and cover letters are discriminatory. People who don’t write perfectly (or know a good writer to help) run the risk of being sorted out right away – even though they may have a lot of other abilities and qualities that make them perfect for the role. Anonymized applications can certainly be a step in the right direction. The problem is that the human brain is phenomenal and will guess what the missing information might be. For truly open-minded and skill-based recruitment, it’s therefore better to take the plunge and skip the documents altogether.

4. The entire process can be done on the phone

Everything from banking to travel booking and shopping – today we are used to being able to do most things directly on our phones. But when it comes to recruitment, it seems that the digital evolution has not kept up. Nevertheless, a large majority of today’s candidates want to apply for jobs on the phone. But the majority of the time it’s the documents that cause the problems: most people do not have access to their CVs and cover letters on the phone and won’t be able to upload or attach to a job application. Even fewer would sit down and edit the documents on the phone.

Recruiting without a CV and personal letter is therefore an important step to a mobile-based recruitment process. And the employer who thinks mobile first when recruiting gets a big head start on the competition – especially when it comes to the battle for young talent.

5. Better candidate experience = stronger employer branding

A company’s employer brand, the brand towards consumers, is affected by all situations where people come into contact with the organization. Of course, this also applies to the candidate experience (even for those who do not get the job in the end). The attitude that job seekers should be thankful and humbly ask for a job is thankfully completely gone today (at least no employer would say it publicly). Nevertheless, recruitment processes still seem to be tailored to the employers rather than the candidates. Recruiting without a CV and personal letter means changing the perspective. The company that offers a smooth and digital candidate experience appears as a more attractive and modern employer than the one that clings to outdated methods.

Use a recruitment tool that can help you with everything mentioned above. Read more here.

What will recruitment look like going forward? What can we expect to see more of in the future? Read more about this topic here Rekryteringsguide: Framtidens rekrytering

Author: Malin Cartagena Lindell

Reviewer: Moa Jacobsson