I am going to take a short break form my series on lesser known sites to source from, to address …well something that is pretty silly. 

So first we have a company who is telling us they can tell if someone fits our core values by the way they write their, resumes, blogs, and linkedin profiles. Now there is a company saying they can tell what a persons traits are by their face.

In other words your face will be able to tell if your honest, passionate, trustworthy, hard working, loyal,  etc. Now I am not naming any names, but these companies are way off base.  

First off lets take the writing one. A few things that make this unlikely is they are making several assumptions. First they assume you wrote your own resume, which is not always the case. In fact you cannot even guarantee that a person put together their own LinkedIn profile anymore. Second they are not taking into account that a person’s mood will impact the way the write. I actually had them do an analysis of my resume, my Linkedin Profile and my blog posts. I was amazed at the difference, and I write all my own stuff. On a scale of 1-10 with 10 meaning they are a perfect fit for a companies core values, and comparing my writing to my companies core values I was a 9 based on my Resume a 7 based on linkedin, and a 5 based on my blogs. Now keep in mind this is a simplistic version of what happens, they actually rate you on each value and then over all. However despite that, how in the heck can you take something seriously when the differences are that big, despite all the writings they analyzed were written by me. Answers simple you cannot, and you should not. 

Now this new thing, facial patterns to determine core values. Lets get real there is no way you can tell if someone in honest, hard working, determined or just about any core value or trait form their face, at least not with any real accuracy.  A study done by and published in 2008 in the Oxford Journals by several experts specifically states that “the relatively poor discrimination between trustworthy- and untrustworthy-looking faces”, this means it is really hard to tell the difference between a trustworthy face and an untrustworthy face. Yet there is a company, again no names, that is saying they can. 

In my opinion these two supposed tools, have major flaws and you would have a better chance of using a crystal ball to get these answers than relying on either facial patterns or writing styles to determine the core values or fit of a candidate.