We’ve been working as or with sales for over 20 years and have to deal with many discussions involving candidate’s resumes. The bias that occurs is that hiring managers make broad, sweeping generalizations based on what they think they see in the resume. This anomaly occurs even after we have screened and assessed strong candidates.
After discussing the possibilities of what may be wrong with the candidate, we usually get to a point where the hiring manager agrees to to the interview based on our recommendation.
After the interview, we hear something to this effect:
“He was much better than I expected.”
Strangely, I suspect we will still be hearing that line years from now. The point is simple, resumes should only be a small part of a hiring decision. A process-oriented approach to hiring limits generalizations and assumptions. Gut-level decisions lead to passing on potentially strong sales candidates if they don’t match preconceived assumptions.