The Unstoppable Résumé campaign allowed former cancer patients to generate automatically their own résumé by linking their LinkedIn account to a dedicated platform. Their personal data were collected and then, each person could add the soft-skills they developed when fighting the disease, generating a personalized text telling their story, written in white-on-white.

The soft-skills people can select were chosen according to the most relevant keywords searched by recruiters and also by collecting testimonies of former patients.

95% of multinationals and 50% of SMB use dedicated software called Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) to select their candidates or automatically reject the résumé containing disease, inactivity or a blank period.

Cancer@Work, an association striving to conciliate work and cancer, wanted to find a way to overcome this discrimination, considering that cancer patients develop precious human qualities which could be turned into valuable skills for companies.

We had two objectives regarding this blank period the résumé: first, change the negative perception patients can have on themselves when it comes to talking about that period of their life. And, change the perception of weakness recruiters instinctively have when seeing a blank on a résumé.

We wanted to turn human qualities into professional skills. So we had to build a bridge.

To do so, we first searched the most in-demand soft skills according to recruiters

And on the other side, we asked the patients community of the organization to list the qualities developed during their fight. We crossed these two lists to come up with a third one : the perfect match between recruiters and patients.

We gave cancer patients the opportunity to create their résumé via a dedicated platform. On this platform, they can tick the soft-skills they developed when fighting the disease to generate a personalized text, written in white-on-white, that filled in the blanks of their so called “inactivity period”. That way, software used by companies will - for the first time - recognize the strength of cancer patients. And so will recruiters.

To produce the Unstoppable Résumé campaign, we first gathered the most relevant soft-skills searched by recruiters. Then we crossed them with former cancer patients testimonies from which we extracted the soft-skills they get while facing the disease. We created the third list: only skills that talk to both patients and recruiters.

We turned this data into a tool which helps former patients to pass through the recruitment software, considering that these ones automatically reject disease, inactivity or a blank period. The platform unstoppableresume.com allowed them to turn a disadvantageous gap on their résumé into one of the best reasons to considerate them. Turn their personal story into a professional asset. The Unstoppable Résumé allows former patients to use technology in order to enhance their professional values.

The Unstoppable Résumé campaign is based on recruitment softwares (called ATS) and especially on how they process data. Because they automatically reject a résumé with disease, inactivity or blank periods, they create a discrimination against former cancer patients. By crossing both data from recruitment methods and from former cancer patients, we were able to raise recruiters’ attention about the people behind the candidates, and the skills behind the blanks. Somehow, it was a way to help them conciliate humanity and efficiency in their recruiting process. But above all, the platform unstoppableresume.com gave former patients the chance to get interviews they wouldn’t have otherwise and prove recruiters that a blank space on their résumé can be an infinite source of strength.

The Unstoppable Résumé generated more than 80 million earned media impressions. Amongst them, traditional and professional media, as well as famous French TV shows, like "Le magazine de la santé". More than 10 000 CVs have been generated in 39 countries around the world. Major recruiters from multinationals also greeted the campaign on Twitter.