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Sophie O’Brien, the founder of the entry-level recruitment service Pollen Careers, told Business Insider that if companies want to hire the best-fitting Gen Z talent, they should ditch asking for a résumé.
Gen Z are people aged 12 to 27. For young people entering the workforce applying for entry-level jobs, résumés often don’t reveal more than schooling and internships. Categories where biases and privilege can tip a hand.
When O’Brien started her business in 2023, having previously worked as a director at a media agency, she was aware of the issues in job hunting.
She knew young candidates were getting ghosted and not receiving feedback on why they’d been passed over, which can be “soul-destroying,” she said.
“I wanted to create something that addressed diversity, that could make job hunting more equitable, more inclusive, more positive for the candidate,” O’Brien told BI.
O’Brien found success in hiring Gen Z talent with less conventional methods.
Résumés may be a root cause of hiring bias
Recruiters have hundreds of resumes to look at and tend to gravitate toward people like themselves, O’Brien said.
“I remember occasions in my old job where I’d be looking at CVs, and then somebody would look over my shoulder and be like, Oh, they’re an Arsenal supporter, get them in,” O’Brien said. “These things don’t mean that they will be the best-suited person to the job.”
Sporting teams aren’t the only social markers that may impact a candidate’s odds.
Hiring managers may have a subconscious or conscious racial bias. This problem was demonstrated earlier this year when researchers sent more than 83,000 fake applications to big US companies, and candidates with white-sounding names received more callbacks.
BI has also previously reported on a struggling job seeker who felt changing the name on his résumé to something more white-sounding may have helped him land a role.
Ageism is also an issue, with about a third of hiring managers not wanting to hire older workers or Gen Zers, according to a Resume Builder survey in March.
O’Brien believes many of these issues can be traced to résumés. She tested her theory by hiring her interns based on how well they made mock-up social media posts for her company.
“In the job posting, I said I’m not going to look at a single CV,” she said. “I don’t care what your academic background is. I don’t care about your work experience history.” She told BI she wanted an intern who was reasonably competent at the job, had autonomy, and had a good attitude.
It worked out great. The two interns she hired are now permanent employees.
While helping out a fellow hiring manager at another company, O’Brien asked if she could test her method on the candidates he was screening to ensure they were inclusive and fair.
The person who got the job was originally in the reject pile because his CV didn’t stand out.
“I was like, OK, I’m onto something here,” O’Brien said. “He was phenomenal, but you wouldn’t have known that from his CV.”
The hiring manager wrongly assumed this candidate lacked soft skills and would struggle with client-facing work because their résumé was so technical.
“But the reality was the total opposite,” said O’Brien. “You can’t showcase in your CV what you are like as a human.”
Entry-level positions aren’t so entry-level
Many Gen Zers are looking for their first jobs where they may not have much relevant experience.
Their chances of landing an interview can depend solely on their education or on whether they’ve been privileged enough to complete a sought-after internship.
Those who didn’t attend top colleges may find themselves in the reject pile simply by default. This is just a “lazy way of shortlisting,” O’Brien said.
“It’s alienating Gen Z,” she said. “That massively hinders their confidence. They’re thinking, well, what chance do I have? And employers are exacerbating that problem.”
Instead, O’Brien finds ways for employers to narrow their search to candidates with traits and skills that matter to them.
Her approach mainly follows the principles of matching junior candidates based on their values and potential and not judging them on where they may have received their education.
“This is groundbreaking for Gen Z, they absolutely love it,” O’Brien said. “For employers, we’ve been really lucky that a lot of them get it.”
Employers are taking note
Three employers, december19, Mobsta, and My Big Career, have stopped screening entry-level candidates based on their résumés.
Majella Lavelle, a managing partner at the media planning and buying agency december19, told BI that traditional recruiting methods were “time-consuming and overwhelming” and led to a lack of diversity.
“We moved to blind CVs some time ago, and that definitely removed any unconscious bias,” she said.
Blind résumés can still be a good starting point, Lavelle added, but they needed a completely new approach.
Laura Littlehales, the CEO of MyBigCareer, which provides disadvantaged children with career advice, said the résumé-free approach has helped the charity find junior talent and save money.
She told BI she wanted to recruit young people but found it challenging to hire on potential rather than experience.
“Through this approach, we were able to reach a greater number of candidates, much less time was spent on recruitment, and the caliber of candidates was much higher than previous recruitment we had run ourselves,” Littlehales said.
David Graham, the head of customer success at the sustainable advertising agency Mobsta, said removing résumés has transformed the way the business hires candidates.
He didn’t realize that before he was exposed to such a small portion of young and found the hiring experience “refreshing.”
O’Brien said it’s amazing to see candidates who were stacking shelves in a grocery store and or working at McDonald’s starting new roles they may not have been considered for.
“The longer they are trapped in lower-skilled jobs that don’t offer longer-term career opportunities, the harder it is to break in,” O’Brien said.
“They’re ready to go,” she said. “They just needed a fair opportunity.”
