The New Skills Economy Needs A New, Skills-Based Resume

An emerging set of digital tools are entering the workforce today—replacing jobs, but also creating them.

Automation, for one, is expected to create at least 21 million new roles (though it may eliminate some 19 million). But despite the gloomy headlines about lost jobs at the hands of emerging technologies, most jobs won't be replaced by robot workers (at least not entirely): Studies suggest only 5 percent of occupations have the potential to be fully automated. So rather than lose their jobs, employees will have to learn new skills in order to adapt to the changes brought on by emerging technologies.

This workforce shift poses a challenge to talent acquisition professionals who need to hire newly-skilled employees (and, in some cases, hire for entirely new positions). Fortunately, the same digital tools about to change jobs also promise to make filling them easier by transforming a traditional hiring vehicle: the resume. The resume of the future will be truly digital—leveraging everything from artificial intelligence to machine learning—so hiring managers can identify, vet and hire top candidates easily and effectively.

For example, with automation shifting the way we work, there's an increased visibility and importance ascribed to human skills in the workplace. According to Deloitte Research, things like "empathy, social skills, [and] communication" will be in high demand. Today's resumes don't reflect those skills—at least, not explicitly. The resume of the future will, featuring personality tests and anonymous reviews from peers—much like a Lyft or Yelp rating.Today, most job applications are submitted, at least in part, online—some take close to an hour to complete, others just take a minute (literally). But the resume of the future will look more like today's LinkedIn profile or About Me website, complete with embedded social feeds and a personalized video introduction. This new resume will also be constructed to emphasize the skills and traits hiring managers are looking for in the new skills economy.

"It will be extremely helpful for employers to have access to honest reviews from people who have been directly impacted by the candidate's work, including managers, peers and direct reports," says Elvis Ha, Cornerstone OnDemand's manager of product management.

Today, rather than sift through the thousands of resumes their companies receive, many HR teams rely on keyword-crawling bots to sort out the top candidates. In the future, they'll have a similar tool—but it will be much, much smarter. AI will be trained to process a much more complex set of data, including social media posts, project experience, relevant trainings, personality test scores and more, to assess candidates more holistically.

The resume of the future will will be designed for candidates to showcase their myriad skills and move from one role to the next—whether at different companies, or internally at one company—more easily. This will be a boon if, as experts predict, the future of work is more project-based, mirroring trends we're already seeing in the gig economy.

"[The resume of the future] will resemble a social profile with information collected from a combination of traditional sources (education and work experience) as well as an individual's online activity," says Ira Wolfe, president of Success Performance Solutions, a pre-employment and leadership testing firm. "AI will then analyze and extract work and job relevant skills from this curated data.

"Showcasing tangible results and the process that it took to come to that positive conclusion will tremendously help employers make the right decision when sourcing new candidates," Foulds says.Brianna Foulds, director of talent acquisition for Cornerstone OnDemand, agrees the focus of a new resume on project-related skills and experience will also go a long way in helping HR professionals identify the right candidate once they've been served an AI-generated shortlist.

For a closer look at the resume of the future, visit us here.