I’ll never be a fan of resumes.  The resume serves as the focal point of a long-standing and lazy process for bringing talent to your team/organization.  Too often accepted, even by leaders that are great in many other areas.

Assuming that having the best and the right person on your team is critical, why wouldn’t you continuously be assessing and relating with talented people, both internally and externally.  When you someday need to add to or replace a valued person on your team, do these two things really well as a leader, all the time:

• Invest your time in stretching and coaching the people around you to prepare them for eventual opportunities.
• Internal people aren’t yet ready?  Approach the external network of potential candidates that you have invested and related with along the way.

‘Post and Hope’ is unacceptable.  Building great teams and organizations with people requires a continuous investment from leaders, not a resume review in your office.

I’ll close with the definition of a resume that I clearly identify with:

“Resume: a written exaggeration of only the good things a person has done in the past, as well as a wish list of the qualities a person would like to have.”   —  Bo Bennett  —

MITM