A few days ago I read Dan Schawbel’s post about 10 great social sites for resume building. You can take “resume building” one of two ways, either (1) a site to put your resume up, or (2) a site to build credibility or authority or something like that, and then put it on your resume. If you are interested in #2, read the You Get It Personal Branding award winners. If you are interested in #1, read this post 🙂
I like the idea of creating a place where your quote-resume-unquote can be online. I think there are two real, solid, true ways to do this:
- Code it yourself on your own website… using html.
- Use emurse.com.
Either of these show a “traditional resume” online. The other non-traditional resumes are things like a LinkedIn Profile, a VisualCV profile, etc. Read Dan’s post for a list of ten options. And then read the comments of that post for more options.
And then you may have heard that “google is the new resume.”
Here’s my hangup – I don’t believe that you should have your resume, or a resume-like profile, on every social tool out there. If I were in a job search and read Dan’s post, my first thought would be, “seriously? I have to go create resumes on all of those sites? That is too overwhelming!”
My second thought would be, “is anyone looking at those profiles/resumes??”
I speak frequently about social marketing, or to the job search crowd, about using social networks for career management. Know what one of the most common questions I get is?
“If I can’t even seem to manage my email, how do I fit in all of this other stuff??”
I agree that you gotta be in it (the social space) to win it (a job, business, etc.). But I don’t think you need to be everywhere… perhaps you simply need to be in just the few right places.
With regard to the resume, I say (1) LinkedIn, and (2) emurse.com… and after that, I don’t have any recommendations for other places. Not that they are bad, but I’m not convinced that they are essential.
What do you think?
I agree with you entirely. With resumes strewn about the Web, you run the risk of staleness unless you spend a lot of time and effort making sure updates are done everywhere at once. Have you noticed how unintuitive it can be to update or remove your information from some of the big job boards? In addition, you can come across as a little too desperate if your resume is plastered all over the Web.
There’s a difference between resume and profile, at least to me. I only have my resume at one place, available for download. I have my profile at many places. And yes, it’s a challenge to update them all, but I don’t – I just update the ones where I get some response.
I came to this conclusion by watching how the different sites get rated by Google. In some cases, I thought the sites were strategic. Example: I have my profile – at least a version of it – at younoodle.com. It’s an interesting site, it generally ranks high on my Google results, and I’ve gotten two legitimate leads from people who’ve found my profile there.
So, at some level, I’d have to disagree with you, but consider that I’m possibly obsessive in my personal branding efforts (or lax, depending on your perspective). I recommend a variety of sites based on how I’ve seen them impact my Google results. Just for the record, I typically talk about Ziggs, Ziki, Naymz, ZoomInfo, and sometimes Younoodle. Ziki is especially easy, since it pulls your profile from LinkedIn, which is home base for professional branding.
And even with all this, the real leverage comes from publishing, as you know and preach. In the last few days, my blog has started to move to the top of my Google searches, above most of these other sites. That’s very gratifying, because on my blog, people see what I want them to see, in some depth. It’s the heart of my personal branding efforts, and it used to show up on page 4-5 of Google searches.
So yeah, get your resume out as Jason describes, get some profiles done at these other sites, then start writing and promoting. It really doesn’t take much time at all to keep the *important* sites up to date.
Jason, I completely agree with you. I take the same approach with job seekers as I do with my marketing clients – do not attempt to be everywhere at once. I advise picking one or two social media tools based on where your audience is hanging out. For job seekers, I firmly believe LinkedIn should be on everyone’s list. I also use VisualCV and love that you can link that to your LI profile. The problem with being everywhere is that it’s exactly like being the jack of all trades and master of none. Pick one or two tools and then MAXIMIZE them.
With some practice and dedication it its possible to manage profiles on a lot of the social networking sites. The thing is, you don’t need to be on all of them. Pick 2-3 that would work ofr you the best and run with those.
Resumes are so obsolete in a time when everything changes so fast. They need an upgrade.
Resumes only express “what you have done.” We need to put out more promotional materials that celebrate “what you can do.”
Moreover, managers have to change their hiring mindset. I’ve changed mine when I look for people. Seeing what somebody did 5 years ago doesn’t interest me. Seeing what they can do today and how they can resolve current problems? Now you’re talking!
That’s the kind of Web sites to invest time in, where you show what you can deliver now while highlighting the latest things you’ve learned.
Great comments everyone…
@Walt – really good points. Interesting that you talk about your blog as the place you want people to end up at… similar to the discussion on my LinkedIn blog about the LinkedIn Profile being a destination, or a channel to your destination.