Happy About My Resume

Yesterday I was interviewed by Krishna De on Blog Talk Radio. Given the current state of the economy, job security is on everyone’s minds and now is certainly the time to dust off and update your resume. During my interview, I discussed

• The 5 biggest resume mistakes
• Strategies for create a compelling profile
• 3 tips for writing accomplishment statements
• The role of web resume portfolios in today’s job market

…and much, much more. You can listen to the show here.

Over 27 million people are using LinkedIn to get in front of potential hiring managers, recruiters, business partners, and decision makers. Yet many LinkedIn profiles I view are missing the key ingredients that help differentiate candidates and are simply a laundry list of every job the person has ever held.

In order to take full advantage of all LinkedIn has to offer, be sure to start with a robust profile. The format of the LinkedIn profile is similar to the template for a resume, so it makes sense to craft a message about your candidacy on LinkedIn based on some of the most salient points on your resume. 

Think of your LinkedIn profile as your resume mini-me…a scaled-down version of you and your accomplishments and a composite of all you have to offer an employer.

I was recently invited to write a guest post on the Albany Times Union blog to discuss the future of the resume. Some people are predicting the demise of the paper document in favor of online tools such as LinkedIn profiles. I don’t see it that way and my prediction is that hiring authorities will continue to expect resumes delivered in traditional text formats. 

However, I do think that hiring managers will become more responsive to the rich media options available to uncover additional information about candidates and LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Visual CV, and others will continue to gain acceptance and momentum as part of the hiring process. Click on the link to read the full “Is the Resume Dead” post.

The last time you looked for a new position, you may have included “references available upon request” on your resume to let the prospective employer know that others could prove the credibility of your candidacy and vouch for your performance. But if the last time you actively sought out a new position was before the Internet, you may want to rethink your references available upon request strategy. In the 21st century, references are often available without request. According to a recent survey by Execunet, 77 percent of recruiters have used Internet search engines to research candidates and 35 percent of them have dropped seekers from consideration based on the information they uncovered.

In their 2007 book, Career Distinction, William Arruda and Kirsten Dixson explore the importance of having a professional brand and building an on-line identity and they even help professionals evaluate their Google results to determine if they are “digitally disguised”, “digitally distinct”, or somewhere in between.

Don’t assume that employers are only looking at the information you have handed to them or that they are only reviewing information on their final candidates. Finding details on job seekers, once a laborious process, has been streamlined into a few quick clicks.  So make sure that all of your “references available without request” support your candidacy and build upon your professional brand.