For an advertising creative currently in a hard-core search for a job (reasonable rates, inquire within), I seem to spend a lot of time producing content that’s so frank as to possibly hamstring me on the job market.
3/10, extremely talented but probably a hassle to work with.
Today’s effort to torpedo my own job prospects is a note about creatives’ resumes, and a lack of creativity in resumes.
Of late, I’ve seen CDs and ECDs in the hiring process talking about judging resumes for not being creative enough. The format is boring — it looks like a Word doc, and they’re supposed to be an art director. Where’s the art? Where’s the use of colors and fonts? Where’s the structure? How hard is it to make your resume look at least a little bit interesting?
I’ve seen it for copywriters, too. What does this resume tell me about their writing ability? The language is all stiff and stilted, and it’s full of numbers and KPIs and things. Why do I care about KPIs? I’m looking for a copywriter who can come up with big ideas and turn them into compelling creative. There’s nothing compelling here.
It makes sense to expect creative people to present themselves creatively. But it’s important to understand who you’re looking at, and how their resume got to your desk. Because you aren’t necessarily looking at the most talented, most promising creatives.
You’re looking at the ones who appeased the robot.
Problematic: ATS, and also those robot dogs those guys keep hitting with a hockey stick
(That just seems like it’s not going to end well.)
One great thing about the availability of remote work in the ad industry is that candidates from all over the country can apply for the same job. The less-great part is where that leaves employers sorting through literally thousands of resumes. They can’t possibly evaluate each one individually — they have to rely on an automated system (usually one that incorporates AI) to determine which candidates to shortlist.
The problem with ATS (applicant tracking systems) is the automated part. We say the ATS “reads” resumes, but really it skims and scans, pulling out numbers and keywords and ranking candidates, ultimately, on their ability to put the right numbers and keywords on their resume.
You might not care about an art director improving CTR by 13%, but the system certainly does. You’re looking for a candidate with a bachelor’s degree “or equivalent experience,” but you don’t specify what kind experience qualifies? The system will only give you bachelor’ses. It’s hard to come up with keywords for “follows the brief but manages to make it creative,” or “great at coming up with those little details that make a difference in addition to Big Ideas,” but keywords are what the system is skimming for. And any candidate who’s been on the market for more than three days has tailored their resume to accommodate that.
And it would be great if a candidate could have a resume that’s both creative and effective at getting through the ATS, but that’s just not possible. The systems are confused by colors, interesting fonts, and nonstandard formats. They’re auto-skimming for digits and percent signs and keywords, demanding copy so data-stuffed there’s no room for individuality. The system doesn’t just not allow for creativity — it actively penalizes it.
What you can kind of do about it a little
So what can you, as an individual charged with evaluating creatives for hiring purposes, do about it?
Not a whole lot, unfortunately. At this point, automated systems — and resumes tailored to satisfy them — have become the norm, and moving to a practice that evaluates candidates on their actual potential would require an industry-wide shift. A lot of it is beyond your control. … But not all of it.
Take all this into account when evaluating resumes. All the stuff I just said. Be conscious of any tendency you might have to subconsciously judge a resume itself on its creativity — it’s like looking at an athlete’s outfit to determine whether they’re a good hurdler. And in the interest of that:
Look at portfolios basically every time. It’s a thrash, I know, but at this stage, the portfolio is the only insight you’ll have into their creative capabilities. So if you’re looking for the best creative, you need to look at the book of every qualified (most about that below) candidate — not just the ones with the good vibes.
Bypass the ATS whenever possible. This is obviously something to work on with your hiring team, but make yourself as available as possible for a direct resume handoff. Professional events, colleges and universities, cold emails. In addition to posting jobs on LinkedIn’s board, announce job openings in your feed, and instruct candidates to email or DM. Get creative, and don’t let a robot make your decisions for you.
Determine what qualities are important to you. Now that you’re getting loads more resumes, you are your own ATS. (Sorry.) What experience are you looking for? How many years? Which skills? You aren’t stuck with digits and keywords — you get to choose what’s important to you, and determine what “qualified” means for you (your hiring team, I mean) to move forward. It can help the team evaluate resumes and even fine-tune their ATS as much as possible for qualities that actually mean something.
ATS aren’t going anywhere. And they’re not something you, as an individual, have a whole lot of power over. All you can do is work through and/or around them to get as many talented, promising creatives in front of you as possible — whether or not they’ve been able to appease the robot. And remember, as you look at the resumes you’ve been handed in search of a diamond in the rough: It’s all rough out here, all the time.