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Ask HN: Why are we still using CVs like old times?

21 points by threefiftyone96 ↗ HN
I've been reviewing applications for my company and I've realized that for small companies, it's still a manual work of reviewing "sheet" like CVs. Some people can't format them properly so it's even worse.

It's 2024, what alternatives do we have to paper styled CVs?

30 comments

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proc0
It's just information in one place, not necessarily paper style CVs. Of course companies need the candidate information. I have complemented my CVs with a website with more detailed info in the past, for example. My thinking is providing as much information as possible and also a summary of it which would be the CV itself.
interbased
I think websites are much more elegant for a modern CV. It’s being looked at on a computer anyway, so might as well take advantage of the benefits of a website.
proc0
Exactly, and for engineers also a good way to display web development skills, I think even if it's not related it can still showcase variety in technical skills.
threefiftyone96
I agree and I thought this is where we would end up eventually. With people having personal websites instead of CVs
throwaway211
If people can't format a CV, they'd likely not fit self-selection for what I need.

If companies insist on filling in a web template, my experience is they have inflexible ERP systems and I'd rather not work there so I don't demand that either.

A CV's fine. I also print them. It costs less than $0.10 per page. How 1993.

blink199
Style doesn’t matter much for recruiters tbh, many use tools to scan keywords and years of experience from text
threefiftyone96
Yeah but shouldn't there have been a better type of way than this manual-ish work?
theogravity
I just use my LinkedIn profile as a CV. If for some reason they want a PDF copy, I just use the export to PDF functionality.

I have gotten feedback from many recruiters that I have an awesome profile, and some use it as an example to show others how to build theirs.

2rsf
Can you share your profile? how good is the exported PDF?

The reason some companies insist on a document is that they feed it to their HR systems, which is not (always) possible with Linkedin

sujayk_33
maybe a voice assistant that represents the candidate, but does the reviewer have time to play around with them?
threefiftyone96
Think some AI companies are playing around with this idea
cynictemp
The future is 100 page CVs! Why? You feed them to an LLM/RAG on the other end, whack it into the hiring company’s system prompt and the rating in stars is spat out the other end.
threefiftyone96
Basically AI written CV will be reviewed by an AI ATS agent
cynictempy
The future is 100 page CVs! Why? You feed them to an LLM/RAG on the other end, whack it into the hiring company’s system prompt and the rating in stars is spat out the other end.
Turboblack
it is likely that the CVs would be correctly formatted - should candidates be given a link to the template of the correct CV?
threefiftyone96
Maybe if there was one true format for all - would be easier to parse
null_investor
CVs are fine, alternatives are Linkedin, which are basically a digitalized version of a CV.

It's ok to sort through CVs, unless you are getting spammed, everyone behind a CV is a person and deserves some attention. There are many tools that help you do that as well.

threefiftyone96
I agree. The point is more to reflect that reviewing CVs and the CV itself is something that is quite outdated - it's basically the representation of a paper sheet
erik_seaberg
There was an HRXML spec back in the semweb era, I've always wondered what happened with that.
philomath_mn
What is so different about 2024 such that CVs are no longer applicable?
DANmode
Are you a human (being hired to work with humans), or an API?
threefiftyone96
Human, but I guess an API would Care even more about a standardized CV format
DANmode
That's the point.

Which direction do you want to push things?

Keep the paper in a person's hand as long as possible - we may not like what happens on the other end of the spectrum.

joshstrange
I’m also handling the interviewing process at a small company and I’m completely confused as to what you are having a problem with. How else would you do your first round of filtering without something like a CV? Is there a format you think would be better?

Honestly I care very little about how the CV is laid out/formatted. As long as I can parse (with my eyeballs) your work history, dates, and the tech you used then I have enough to make my decision.

The only CV that almost made me reject the candidate outright was a pdf that was not searchable. I’ll read the full CV of everyone I actually interview but if you don’t have at least some tech overlap with the stack I’m hiring for (or equivalent, such as I’m looking for Vue but if you have recent Angular/React then we will be fine) then I’m not going to waste my or your time.

If I can’t ctrl+f in your resume then you’ve failed.

aprdm
I do that in big tech too for ~100s of CVs per role, what's the big deal ? The alternative seems to be for me to lose control over who I want to work with to algorithms or people with less context