---
title: "Why Do the Best Talents Often Lack a Perfect Resume?"
description: "This article explores why candidates with non-traditional backgrounds, termed 'boxers,' may outperform those with perfect resumes, termed 'golden keys,' citing research on post-traumatic growth and examples like Steve Jobs."
author: "New Distribution"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2017-02-13"
language: "en"
canonical: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/why-do-the-best-talents-often-lack-a-perfect-resume-de07fbac/"
markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/why-do-the-best-talents-often-lack-a-perfect-resume-de07fbac.md"
original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/CofWlmju6Jbm316mrdOUig"
translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E4%B8%BA%E4%BB%80%E4%B9%88%E6%9C%80%E4%BD%B3%E4%BA%BA%E6%89%8D%E5%BE%80%E5%BE%80%E6%B2%A1%E6%9C%89%E5%AE%8C%E7%BE%8E%E7%9A%84%E7%AE%80%E5%8E%86-de07fbac.md"
attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/why-do-the-best-talents-often-lack-a-perfect-resume-de07fbac/"
usage_policy: "https://xinjignxiao.com/ai-policy.txt"
---

# Why Do the Best Talents Often Lack a Perfect Resume?

> This article explores why candidates with non-traditional backgrounds, termed 'boxers,' may outperform those with perfect resumes, termed 'golden keys,' citing research on post-traumatic growth and examples like Steve Jobs.

**Click the image for details**
**At 20**, Jack Ma, Yu Minhong, and Wang Baoqiang—who had a perfect resume?
Imagine this scenario: your company posts a job opening, and after screening resumes, two finalists remain.
Candidate A: graduated from a prestigious university, GPA 4.0, flawless resume, excellent references.
Candidate B: graduated from a non-prestigious university, moved between various jobs, even worked as a cashier and a singing waiter.
Both meet the job requirements. Who would you choose?
**▲ A TED video every employer should watch**
**The following is the speech:**
Your company posts a public job opening. Applications start rolling in, and qualified candidates are shortlisted. Now the selection begins.
Candidate A: Ivy League, GPA 4.0, perfect resume, excellent references. All the right elements.
Candidate B: public school graduate, moved between jobs, including cashier and singing waiter.
But remember—both are qualified. So I ask you: **Who would you choose?**
My colleagues and I coined some formal terms to describe these two categories of candidates.
We call **A the 'golden key'—someone with obvious advantages destined for success.** We call **B the 'boxer'—someone who must fight through obstacles to reach the same goal.** You just heard an HR director compare candidates to golden keys and boxers, which sounds politically incorrect and arbitrary, but let me explain before my HR credentials are revoked.
A resume tells a story. Over the years, I've learned that people with patchwork-quilt experiences make me think twice before tossing their resumes.
A series of disparate jobs might indicate volatility, lack of focus, or elusiveness. Or it might signal struggling to overcome obstacles. At the very least, boxers deserve an interview. I want to emphasize: I don't reject golden keys; getting into and graduating from an elite university takes hard work and sacrifice. But **if your entire life is designed for success, how do you handle tough times?**
One person I hired thought that because he graduated from an elite university, certain jobs were beneath him—like doing manual labor briefly to better understand the company. Eventually, he left. But on the other hand, if your life is destined for failure and you succeed, what does that mean? I'd suggest interviewing boxers. I know this well because I am a boxer.
Before I was born, my father was diagnosed with schizophrenia and couldn't work, despite his talent. Our life was like a mix of *One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest*, *What's Eating Gilbert Grape*, and *A Beautiful Mind*. I was the fourth of five children of a single mother, and we lived in a chaotic neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York.
We never had a home, a car, or a washing machine. For most of my childhood, we didn't even have a phone. **I'm eager to understand the link between business success and boxers because my life could easily have turned out differently. I've seen successful businesspeople and studied those with great leadership.**
I see commonalities: many faced early hardship—poverty, abandonment, early death of a parent, learning disabilities, alcoholism, or violence. **Conventional thinking holds that trauma leads to suffering and emphasizes failure outcomes.**
But in studying these unsuccessful cases, the data revealed an unexpected conclusion: **even the worst circumstances can lead to growth and transformation.** A remarkable but counterintuitive phenomenon has been discovered, which scientists call 'post-traumatic growth.'
In a study measuring the impact of adversity on disadvantaged children, of 698 participants who endured the harshest trials, one-third grew into healthy, successful, and fulfilled adults. Despite immense hardship, they succeeded. **One-third.**
Look at this resume. **He was abandoned by his biological parents and placed in foster care. He didn't finish college. He changed jobs frequently, spent a year in India, and had a reading disability.** Would you hire him? His name is **Steve Jobs**.
A study of the world's most successful entrepreneurs found that a significant number have dyslexia. In the U.S., 35% of entrepreneurs have dyslexia. More notably—among those who experienced post-traumatic growth, they viewed their learning disability as a valuable difficulty that gave them an advantage, making them better listeners and more detail-oriented.
They didn't see their potential before adversity, but because of it, they found their strengths. They embraced their wounds and struggles, which was key to their success as entrepreneurs. They knew that without these experiences, they might not have developed the courage and perseverance needed for success.
A colleague of mine had his life upended by China's Cultural Revolution in 1966. At 13, his parents were sent to the countryside. Schools closed, and he fended for himself in Beijing until 16, when he found a job in a garment factory.
Instead of accepting his fate, he resolved to continue his education. Eleven years later, the political landscape changed, and he heard about a highly competitive college entrance exam. He had only three months to learn all of middle and high school coursework. So, every day after work, he slept briefly, then studied until 4 a.m., then went back to the factory. He did this for three months straight.
He did it. He succeeded. His determination to continue his studies was unwavering, and he never gave up hope. Today, he has a master's degree. His two daughters graduated from Cornell and Harvard.
Boxers are driven by the belief that only they control their destiny. When things don't go well, boxers ask, "What else can I do to create a better outcome?" Boxers have a sense of purpose: never give up on yourself. If you've survived poverty, a crazy father, and multiple robberies, you think, "Business challenges? That's nothing. Easy. I can handle it."
This reminds me of—humor. Boxers know that humor helps you through the toughest times, and those who laugh at you can help change your perspective on the future. Finally, relationships. Those who overcome hardship don't do it alone. At some point, they meet mentors and people who help them along the way. Having someone to rely on no matter what is key to overcoming adversity.
I was lucky. When I got my first job after college, I didn't have a car, so I carpooled across two bridges to work. The woman driving was then a presidential assistant. She saw my work and encouraged me to look to the future, not dwell on the past.
Along the way, I met many people who taught me that honest advice is hard to hear; they were all my mentors. They didn't care that I had been a singing waitress to pay for college.
Finally, one more valuable insight: companies committed to diversity and inclusive practices are more likely to support boxers, helping them outperform their peers. *Diversity Inc.* magazine's operational performance exceeded the S&P 500 by 25%. So back to my original question: who will you bet on—the golden key or the boxer? I choose the underestimated contender whose secret weapons are passion and determination. Hire the boxer.
*Article from TED English Speech (ID: Ai-Talks)*
-END-


---

## Copyright and AI use

This article is sourced from New Distribution. Search, quotation, summarization, and model training are permitted, but every use must credit New Distribution and retain the canonical source URL.

Contact: zhaobo258@gmail.com · +86 158 5481 7671