The Shrinking Resume

May 28, 2009

At this week’s Social Media Success Summit 2009 the social networking maven Gary Vaynerchuk told a listener who made his living writing resumes that he might want to seek other work.  Gary, who never minces words about anything, thinks that the old fashioned resume is destined for the junk heap.

Why?  Because potential employers can find everything they want by Googling you, and checking out your Facebook and LinkedIn profiles.

Not so fast, Gary.  I was at a networking reception last evening and good friend and colleague and I began to chat.  She’s in the job market.  But instead of whipping out a resume (actually she would never be so gauche as to do that in good company), she pulled out her “business card.”   She doesn’t believe in the old fashioned resume, either.  What she had done was turn her business card into her resume.  It was quite ingenious.  The business card had two-folds and each of the three little sections had everything included about her professional experience, volunteer activities and education.  She even had room on the first page for her color photo.

After leaving with her card, I had another thought:  if I ever was in the job market again I could do the same thing.  All those years of experience summarized in a 3-1/2” x 2” card.  Actually, it’s a little depressing to realize that my accomplishments can be summarized in so few words.  Next thing you know, companies will be asking candidates to send their resumes in a Tweet.  I feel myself growing smaller and smaller.

No related posts.

Comments

• Try Different — Seth Godin

  The usual mantra is to 'try harder'. Trying harder is impossible when you're already trying as hard as you can.

  But you can always try different.

  Years ago, I was creating trivia questions for a product we built for Prodigy. We had a 99% accuracy rate in doing the questions. Which was great, except there were 1800 questions in a batch, which meant 18 wrong each time, which was totally and completely unacceptable. These were honest mistakes, made by smart people working as hard as they could.

  No matter how hard we tried, we couldn't do better than 99%. So we switched our system completely and did it in a totally different way. Same number of people, same number of hours, 100% accuracy.

  If it's not working, harder might not be the answer.

• Blog Tags

  annual report Blog brand Brand advocates Branding Business Communication CEO Change Communication Communication channel communications Communications Strategy Crisis Communications culture of communication employee communication Employee Communications Employee Engagement Employee Recognition Employees as Brand Advocates Google IBM internal communication internal communications jeannette paladino Jeff Simpkins Key Messages Letter writing Mashable Media Interviews Motivation Nonverbal communication Passion Personal branding Planning Problems public relations Social Media Social Media Strategy Thank You Notes training Trust Twitter viral community Write Speak Sell Writing