I generally don’t like to change my behavior to suit the system: the system should serve me, not the other way around. That applies to traffic lights just as much as recruitment sites. However, I am also a fan of pragmatism and complaining about the situation won’t get me a job, so I’ve definitely taken notice here.

Ideally, and perhaps you can make a contribution towards this goal, there should be a universal standard to list employment history, skills, hobbies, etc. I would love to be able to put that online in one place and then use it everywhere else. I see two major problems:

1 - even if someone came up with such a system, they would probably do everything within their abilities to lock their users in. That in turn would ruin it’s usability but not necessarily their business plan. I’d say LinkedIn demonstrates this a little bit.

2 - it is extremely difficult to get this right. There is no one size-fits-all solution. The traditional list of employers and industries for example is great for people who spent their whole life doing 1 particular thing, but a lot less useful for people (like me) who do a lot of different things. Especially if the official description of these things doesn’t really say much about the content. And don’t even get me started on GPA; just because you can sort by it, doesn’t imply it means anything.

In light of point 2, I was very pleased to see that you are experimenting with tags for skills. I’m not saying tags are the ultimate solution, but it does break with the 19th century CV tradition and that is a good start.