Why you should throw out your CV

Several major organisation including the BBC, HSBC and KPMG have already pledged to recruit on a name-blind basis

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There is one thing you might soon get rid of when applying for a new job: your CV.

Compose, a growing California based cloud storage firm acquired by IBM in 2015, has stopped asking candidates for their CVs as part of an effort to streamline hiring. Applicants are now judged on work samples to quickly identify those worthy of an interview.

Tim Yocum operations and cloud computing specialist at Compose explained that the company’s earliest hires were done through referral or trusted acquaintances which slowed the process down and decreased the choice.

“We set out to make our hiring process more transparent, less subjective, and reduce as many biases as possible while decreasing the time spent finding the ideal new hire,” Yocum explained in a blog post.

In the UK a similar discussion is on the way as we are often victims of unconscious bias without knowing it.

According to a study by Marquette University, people with common first names are viewed as more likable and more likely to be hired.

Another study by Stanford University suggest that gender is also playing a role in how applicants are perceived during the hiring process.

More and more company managers are turning to “blind hiring”, where a company sets a task or meets a candidate rather than looking at their CV, reveals talent and cuts down discrimination.

In October, Prime Minister David Cameron announced that the British government and some top UK firms agreed to start a “name-blind recruitment” strategy in order to remove the names of candidates from their applications forms. While UCAS, which acts as the central body for university applications, will also work to name-blind applications from 2017.

Several major organisation including the BBC, HSBC and KPMG have already pledged to recruit on a name-blind basis.

Deloitte, one of the “big four” professional services firms, will recruit graduates using “contextualised data”, which allows managers to look at the context in which candidates achieved their goals, focusing on their personal and economic background.

For David Sproul, senior partner and chief executive of Deloitte UK, it is a “business imperative” to “get this right” in order to hire people who think and innovate differently. While not a definite remedy, the company believes it is a solid first step for equal hiring.

“We want to show that everyone can thrive, develop and succeed in our firm based on their talent, regardless of ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, or any other dimension that can be used to differentiate people from one another,” Mr Sproul said.