Don't Look past the obvious

What I don’t get is this resume scanning software (word search).
If you don’t have the right words in your cover letter or resume the software deems you not qualified and kicks you out. What’s up with this nonsense. I understand the need to manage a mass number of resumes, but what about those hidden gems, those that will change the world. Many of them are creative thinkers, not detailed obsessive. Can you image if some of the great minds in history had to submit their resume to be scanned before they were allowed to do what they did best.

Can you imagine Alexander Graham Bell’s resume when he was trying to invent the Telephone.
Goal: To talk to someone that is not with me.
Employment: Self employed
Skills and Experience: I am driven by a unique curiosity in a variety of scientific activities involving kites, airplanes, tetrahedral structures, sheep-breeding, artificial respiration, desalinization and water distillation, and hydrofoils.
Based on this resume, I would say, smart guy that has no experience in talking to people. But if I have a job for a sheep breeder, he is my guy.

What about Abraham Lincoln?
Goal: To become President of the United States
Education: Educated myself by reading borrowed books by the light of the fire.
Employment: Worked splitting fence rails and clerking in a general store, and then as a country lawyer
Skills and Experience: Can read by the light of a fire. I’m a quick learner.
Given his resume, would you believed that he really was a country lawyer. Who would have elected him to the Illinois General Assembly, or a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. He achieved all that plus became one of the greatest US presidents in history.

How about the Wright Brothers.
Goal: To fly like the birds.
Experience: Published a daily paper. Make and repair bicycles
Education: High School studies in Greek and trigonometry, plus studied from my home library.
Skills and Experience: Like to tinker with thinks such as Kits and Gliders.
Special interest. Building wind tunnels.
Would you have trusted these guys who repaired bikes and like to tinker, to find a way for man to fly like a bird. As history shows, they accomplished flight never owning a pilots licenses.

The morel of all this is, when judging people, look past the obvious to search for the gems. They are out there, but a word search tool can only element them, it can’t find them.