One of my job-blogging colleagues writes about a concept called Job Angels, which is essentially a network formed around the concept of people helping each other find employment. Sounds great! I’ve been doing it for years and never knew there was an organization. Does that make me an unofficial member? Do I owe back dues?
Silliness aside, she drove home the point that electronic job applications have not made the candidate vetting process any easier for recruiters. Indeed, if anything they have made it much easier for great unqualified masses to spam employers with unusable applications that crowd out the qualified. I don’t even want to know the typical signal-to-noise ratio these days.
She’s correct, then, that the process is broken. Maybe services like Job Angels is one solution. But maybe there’s another.
What if employers could subscribe to an employee metadata service, one to which employees can accept or decline at their choosing? The service would be certified, and publish on the web the credentials, training records, project lists and other aspects of an employee’s tenure with each company. Disciplinary data would be omitted, represented by the customary “Would you rehire this ex-employee?” question as a data field.
This sort of service serves two purposes: provide employees a means of backing up their career claims, and assuring prospective employers that the candidates are truly qualified.
Think of what a difference this would make! Suddenly the internet’s power to facilitate connections between opportunities and opportunists is utilized appropriately and effectively. Employers who subscribe to the service for hiring purposes should find their costs reduced significantly! This could even be done as an extension to LinkedIn‘s services.
I’m sure there are drawbacks I’m overlooking due to my enthusiasm, so please– point them out in the Comments section. I am looking forward to feedback on this one; don’t let me down!
Tabula Crypticum 
I love that idea! No doubt a new way is needed. Perhaps you’ve found your next money maker…
Thanks for the feedback.
I do have another idea for improving electronic resumes… if only I had the capital to launch something like this! It would take a monumental effort…
No better time…
Interesting concept. Do you think there may be some privacy issues with this idea?
I’m sure there might be, Bear, which is why employees would have to provide express consent for the data to be made public.
The service, as I see it, would be two-fold: enable employers to see the skills and experience of prospective employees and for job seekers to manage their work history effectively. I see it as “LinkedIn on steroids”. It might even be a natural outgrowth of that business.
The problem (as I see it) is that employers are not reading the resumes they get now, and the ones they DO see are based on keyword searches. As I note in one of my posts, their databases are filled with resumes that have never been seen and, many times, don’t even know they have one in their ATS until an agency recruiter submits the candidate (that’s a whole other topic!). Does your premise assume they will search for the metadata? If I recall correctly, the boards now allow resume-posters to attach certain “labels” (eg, Certified! or some such thing) to their resumes showing this type of data. I no longer have my job board subscriptions, but if you can see the resumes from the employer’s perspective you’ll see what I mean.
What I would hope to see from a realization of this idea is first, that employee data is accurate and verifiable. That would cut down on spamming since prospects using the system would not be able to get away with lying about experience and skills. This in turn increases the signal-to-noise ratio, enabling both prospects and employers to work more effectively. Win-win.
EDIT: one thing I probably didn’t make clear– I’m looking for the next step in resumes. I think it’s time to move past static documents and into the world of flexible-yet-structured data. Dynamic resumes if you will.
Something else to clarify: release of work info would be strictly under the employee’s control. He/she would have the option to allow transfer of data to a registered 3rd party. I’ll elaborate further in a follow-up soon.