The resume is broken

It was once possible to have a single resume that encompassed your professional and educational successes enough that an employer could determine if you were the right fit for an interview or even a job.

These days, though, when there are often over 150 candidates for a given job, applying with your single, generic resume is no longer a reliable way to succeed. Automated systems check how closely your application matches the job before a recruiter even sees it, and even if you make it past that, only the top 2% of applicants will be asked to interview. That decision often comes after just a few seconds scanning your resume, so using tailored, precise language is a must.

But when the average job seeker needs to apply to dozens (and even hundreds) of jobs to land just one, it can become too difficult and time consuming to write a custom tailored resume for each of those applications.

When the creation and evaluation of resumes is outdated, inefficient, and broken, everyone loses.

It's not just a painful process for job seekers, either. Recruiters and hiring managers have to sift through hundreds of generic resumes trying to find the ones harboring candidates who best fit the role.

This is a time intensive process, especially when done with paper or PDF documents that don't offer any of the modern conveniences of automatic summaries or dynamic adaptations such as intelligently highlighting the most pertinent part of someone's resume.

Combine the time wasted writing these resumes (copying and pasting information between Word documents, recreating a PDF each time you use an online resume builder, and tailoring the language in each one) with the difficulty for recruiters to quickly and accurately assess each static, wall-of-text document and you have a severely inefficient and wasteful system.

The creation and evaluation of resumes are the core elements in job seeking and hiring. When those elements are outdated, inefficient, and well, broken, everyone loses.

What if finding jobs, writing tailored, successful resumes, and applying were so fast and simple that job seekers could instead spend their time worrying about which company was best for them?

Imagine an economy in which 70% or more of workers are satisfied with their jobs, instead of the 70% who are currently unsatisfied. Worker productivity would soar, businesses would grow, and most importantly, people would be happier and more fulfilled. I’ve talked to many people who are stuck in jobs they dislike, but are hesitant to leave because of the daunting job search and application process.

What if that process were made so much easier that people could freely move between jobs until they found satisfying work? What if finding jobs, writing tailored, successful resumes, and applying were so fast and simple that job seekers could instead spend their time worrying about which company was best for them?

Employers would also find better candidates, since each resume would more accurately reflect each person. Instead of the same generalized information they often get now, employers would learn what suited an applicant for that role in particular. Then, what if evaluating those resumes was made faster, easier, and more accurate altogether?

As individuals have more varied professional experiences and as businesses look to make data-driven hiring decisions, we don't need just a new way to create resumes, but a new resume itself.

Even in the face of massive changes in how people find jobs and how employers hire, resumes – and how they're created and evaluated – have been surprisingly slow to adapt.

Sure, there are plenty of PDF resume builders online, but none of them adequately solve the underlying issue of needing a custom tailored resume for each job. Few, if any, begin with the understanding that a person’s background and skills are much larger than a single page. Yet only by accounting for everything that makes a candidate great can a strong, successful resume be created at all.

LinkedIn has made some strides in the right direction, framing a person more holistically as a part of a network of peers. Yet they still present their users' rich background and history as a single, generic description that employers often want only as a supplement to a tailored resume.

To fundamentally address the problems and inefficiencies that are hampering both job seekers and employers we need a new conception of how resumes are created, shared, and used.

We need tools that make the tailoring process as easy as a single click, and new ways to share resumes and cover letters that help candidates stand out and employers find the best talent for each job. As individuals have more varied professional experiences and as businesses look to make data-driven hiring decisions, we don't need just a new way to create resumes, but a new resume itself.

Savviest exists to fix the tedious process of writing successful, tailored resumes and cover letters, finding the perfect job, and getting hired.

And there is so much to gain for everyone: workers who aren’t afraid to pursue their career goals, who are more fulfilled, and more productive; employers who spend less time hiring, yet find even higher quality candidates; and an economy that runs smoother with fewer people feeling trapped in their jobs.

Savviest exists to solve these problems.

It exists to fix the tedious process of writing successful, tailored resumes and cover letters, finding the perfect position, and getting hired. It exists to help employers find the best person for the job.

Savviest exists to make fundamental changes to how we build and advance our careers.