Personnel selection, why question the centrality of the CV

In my opinion, this is not an injustice, but the simple observation that in the vast majority of cases, betting on those who 'don't have it in their CV' sooner or later turns out to be a vain attempt to give opportunities to those who will not make it in the end. So let's start with the CV and those who don't have the right CV must be discarded at the outset.

This is a seemingly unassailable pragmatic reasoning. Yet there are at least three considerations that could challenge the 'CV-centric' principle of selection:

1) Not all professional positions, even of responsibility, have such specificities and learning barriers as to require a 'CV-centric' selection (if you haven't already done so, I won't even consider you). Especially since the evolution of work in the age of artificial intelligence makes so many tasks appalable to technology and thus so many roles less 'technical'.

2) To set up a selection process in a 'CV-centric' way means to 'freeze' the evolution of that role and consequently also the evolution of the company's operations. If the automotive purchasing managers all work in the same way and I demand that my next purchasing manager comes from the same sector as me and has already held that responsibility at one of my competitors, I create the conditions for it to continue as it has always been done. The outsider candidate can certainly be a risk but is also likely to bring new ideas, new strategies, useful contamination from other worlds. In short, a 'CV-centric' approach does not only take away opportunities from candidates but also from the companies that hire them.

3) Technology and artificial intelligence make it increasingly possible to easily and immediately construct tests, assessments and gamification that test the candidate by reconstructing verisimilar technical-professional situations. Why don't we then think about starting the selection processes from these tests instead of analysing CVs? Is it so difficult to think of an inverted recruiting process where the candidates' CVs are assessed at the end of the process instead of at the beginning?

Perhaps the time is ripe (cultural sensitivity and technological possibilities) for us all to be a little freer of our CVs, a straitjacket for some, a Linus blanket for others. No one can take away from us what we have done and what we have been, no one can make us debut in Serie A if we have never played football. We can, however, demand a little more doubt and above all more courage from those who, in evaluating our candidature, are thinking: 'Too bad, he would be the right person but he has the wrong CV'.

*Managing director of the training and consulting company Sparring