Tired of reading the same old résumé? So was Jeffrey Scardino.
While teaching at a portfolio school in New York, Scardino was helping students with their post-grad résumés, when the idea hit him.
“Instead of trying to embellish your skills,” Scardino said, “what if you just showed some transparency and talked about what you’ve failed at and what you’ve overcome? To me, that would be more interesting to see in a candidate.”
The Relevant Résumé, a website created by Scardino, provides job seekers with a résumé template to list experience, education, missed honors, nonskills and bad references.
Scardino’s hope is for companies to introduce the Relevant Résumé to their interview process. Once the applicant pool has been whittled down in the traditional way, candidates can then be asked to complete his Relevant Résumé, Scardino said.
And no, this isn’t a joke. Scardino feels that this new résumé helps reveal those who aim high and aren’t afraid to fail or make mistakes. He said that by listing missed achievements, candidates are saying, “I want to show you what I’ve overcome and how I got to this point.”
Along with unfulfilled goals and missed opportunities might be some ruffled feathers. By contacting “bad references,” or people who the candidate hasn’t gotten along with, hiring managers can learn a lot more about a person than the traditional, often coached references, he said.
For his own Relevant Résumé, Scardino reflected on past challenges, which he said was a humbling experience. "It made me want to strive harder," Scardino said.
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