, Columnist
Resumes Are a Terrible Way to Hire People
One-page summaries don't predict job performance, but they do perpetuate inequality.
Resumes: as outdated as a BlackBerry.
Photographer: Chris Hondros/Getty ImagesThis article is for subscribers only.
Employers spend billions annually screening and assessing potential new hires, but they aren’t getting much for their money. As many as 95% of employers admit to hiring the wrong people each year. Worse, more than a third of employers report being unaware of the true costs of bad hires, which can reach as high as five times annual salary costs.
The research, however, shows that these results should be no surprise. Our hiring problem starts at the very beginning of the recruiting process with the most ubiquitous screening tool: the resume.