Help Wanted: Why You Can’t Replace Your Resume with Social Media (At Least Not Yet)

on January 30, 2012

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Last fall, Fred Wilson’s venture capital firm, Union Square Ventures, had an investment analyst position it needed to fill. But instead of asking for resumes or cover letters, it instead requested “links that will help us get to know you… anything from a Twitter account to a blog or Tumblr to a project you hacked together — whatever represents you best.”

It also wanted two short videos, submitted through the website of a startup called Take the Interview — the videos, done instead of screening anyone by phone, were to answer two questions: “Why are you interested in the analyst role at Union Square Ventures?” and “Which web or mobile services most inspire you?”

No cover letter. No resume. But a video?! Is this the start of a trend? Maybe, but don’t ditch your resume and start panicking quite yet.    Read More →

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Six Mantras for a Rock-Solid Resume

on January 11, 2012

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If your resume bores you, what do you think it does for other people?In his new series for us, Kenneth Hein will survey the best ways that job seekers can promote themselves and their brands, both with the tried and true and with newer methods. Either way, Kenneth will be drawing on the hard-won experience and knowledge he gained, first as a journalist on the marketing and advertising beat and then working as a marketer himself.

As the “writer” among my friends, I have always been on the receiving end of “Dude, what do you think of this?” From love poems to term papers (back in the day) to cover letters and resumes (today), I am the go-to guy. And, of course, my experience with resumes has only grown more after having looked at hundreds of them over the course of my career in communications.

Lately, a month hasn’t gone by without an acquaintance reaching out to me to doctor their resume. It’s gotten to the point where I’ve found myself repeating the same mantras. Whether it’s someone who works in politics, production, or public relations, there are some very basic facts about resumes that most people tend to forget. Don’t be one of the forgetful. Here are six mantras to remember:    Read More →

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Bullet Points: Help for the Shapeless Resume

on September 7, 2011

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Bullet Points: Resumes, CVs, and Job Applications That Get Noticed

on July 18, 2011

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  • “Insanely Cool Resumes That Landed Interviews At Google And Other Top Jobs” [Business Insider]
  • “7 Ingenious Resumes That Will Make You Rethink Your CV” and tips on how to make your digital resume sparkle. [Mashable]
  • If just making your resume pop isn’t enough, consider interactive videos, billboards, and the infamous Google Ad Experiment:

  • The Guardian has its own examples of what it calls “extreme job hunting“—our favorite is the guy whose CV used to claim that he was raised by wolves. (Note that he was applying to work on a comedy series, not be an analyst at Bear Sterns.)
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    Hiring 101: Resume Red Flags and How to Overlook Them

    on July 13, 2011

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    In between the time that you become a manager and the time you get fired, you may be asked to replace a worker who has quit in disgust. This is an excellent opportunity to showcase your skills in hiring by disregarding resume-screening “best practices” and instead “thinking outside of the box.”

    Although this frequently results in hiring serial killers, occasionally you will end up hiring a unique, relatively harmless individual who shakes up the status quo and whose body odor is hardly ever a distraction.

    Consider these tips for going through resumes:

  • Does the candidate have a cool email address like badmofo@xxxmail.com? If so, five points for creativity!
  • How do the candidate’s qualifications match up with the requirements of the position? If the job calls for digital design skills and their most relevant work experience is working the drive-through at DQ, five more points! Candidates with all the required skills are overqualified and will become bored quickly. Eliminate them and focus instead on go-getters who can learn as they go.

    •    Read More →

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    Poll Results: Don’t Count the Resume Out

    on June 20, 2011

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    So it looks as if you are as unsure of the future as we are. When asked if LinkedIn was going to kill off the resume within five years, a (very slight) majority of you concluded that resumes weren’t going anywhere in that timeframe.

    Despite the prediction, few people in the comments or on our Twitter feed seemed upset with the idea of having the resume disappear: as Chris Palle put it, “Personally, it’d be great to have seen the resume go the way of the dodo, yesterday.”

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    The Hired Guns Poll: Is LinkedIn Killing Off the Resume?

    on June 13, 2011

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    LinkedIn’s stock price may be going through some turbulence after its IPO last month, but the site continues to expand its base of over 100 million users, and its perceived importance is on the rise, too.

    That got us wondering—is LinkedIn going to be so ubiquitous in a few years that its profiles will actually replace the traditional do-it-yourself resume? After all, most people seem to be better at keeping their profiles up-to-date than they are at keeping their resumes current . . . .

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    “Drinking the Kool-Aid” and Other Corporate Clichés to Avoid

    on May 25, 2011

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    Editorial consultant Deborah Gaines has a client list that includes major publishers and international law firms. (Full disclosure: The Hired Gun’s blog editor, John Rambow, has worked for her in the past.) Recently, she started The Corporate Writer, a blog that covers the (often subpar) ways that language is used at work–whether it’s in the messages that help get you hired in the first place, weird office-speak, or the constantly changing world of email etiquette. We talked with Deborah about what sort of language problems are worth trying to avoid at work–and also what you might have to let slide.

    Congrats on the new site–what made you decide to start it?
    I was whining to someone about business-language felonies and she said, “You’re obsessed. You should do a blog.”

    Do you think that written communication has gotten worse? Or does bad communication just seem to stick around longer now?
    I don’t know if it’s gotten worse–a recent post, In praise of humane writing, quotes a hilarious memo on the subject from 1977. But there is definitely more bad writing floating around since we all adopted computers and smartphones. We pay less attention to what we say because it’s so much easier to just blurt.    Read More →

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    The Haiku Resume: Boiling Down Your Career into One Line

    on May 2, 2011

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    Think First Then Type, a column by the copywriter par excellence Daryl Lang, comes with tips and techniques to help you use language more effectively at work. After all, even the best and brightest ideas won’t catch on if you can’t get them understood.

    Japanese sceneYou’ve spent hours perfecting your resume. It glows with relevant skills and accomplishments, it’s optimized for keyword-crawling job sites, and it’s been PDF’d in perfectly kerned Helvetica.

    Great work. But when somebody visits your website, your resume isn’t the “front door.” Your visitors want to see a few words that describe what you do. And if the first words that greet them are a boring biography (“an award-winning whatever with X years of experience”), you’re missing an opportunity.

    You are a brand in the marketplace, and the best brands say what they do in a few concise words. You can identify many companies by their taglines alone. “The ultimate driving machine.” “Good to the last drop.” “What’s in your wallet?” You need a compelling tagline too.    Read More →

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    Bullet Points: Social-Media Pitfalls, Horrible Resumes, and Long-Haul Careers

    on March 17, 2011

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