Thirty years ago we used cassette tapes, pay phones, giant camcorders, paper resumes, VCRs, and we watched ALF. All of these things were an important part of daily life in the 1980’s. Only one is still around thirty years later. And unfortunately, it’s not ALF.
The standard paper resume doesn’t work in a digital world. Human resources, recruiters, and hiring managers still sort through stacks of resumes, trying their best to whittle down the numbers to manageable level for conducting interviews. And even then, most people that do the whittling hope they haven’t overlooked someone because the candidate’s resume didn’t accurately portray who they really are. Software like Microsoft Word and resume parsers may have moved some of this activity to the computer, but it’s basically the same process. Volume of resumes in, whittle down, and conduct interviews. In a world of rovers on Mars, driverless cars, and iPhones, one would think we’d have come up with a better approach. Here are some companies that are trying.
LinkedIn
LinkedIn is the de facto tool for professional networking. Individuals and companies use LinkedIn for networking, job searching, hiring, company research, and connecting with affiliates, including alumni, industry, and a variety of other business related groups. If you are looking for a job and aren’t on LinkedIn, you are at a huge disadvantage.
Vizualize.me
Take your traditional text resume and turn it into a beautiful infographic. In Vizualize.me’s own words, “We want to enable people to express their professional accomplishments in a simple yet compelling personal visualization. Our vision is to become the future of resumes.”
Re.vu
Re.vu wants you to share your story. They offer a “radical redesign of the traditional resume.” Their technology makes it possible to design a dynamic, interactive, and visual resume that is significantly more effective at representing the whole person than a common resume alone.
Seelio
Currently available to college students only, Seelio allows members to go beyond a resume and create a portfolio of work. The idea is that potential employers can see what the candidate is capable of as opposed to just reading about it.
BeKnown
BeKnown is an app for Facebook that allows individuals to do their professional networking while keeping their personal profile completely private. BeKnown is for everyone, all levels and all types of job seekers.
BranchOut
Also a facebook app, BranchOut is similar to BeKnown. The key is to pick one of these two apps and stick with it.
GetHired
GetHired is a social network made up of candidates and recruiters who can contact each other directly. It allows job seekers to not only upload video introductions on their profile, but it also includes the ability to do video interviews.
HireArt
With HireArt, job seekers are asked to complete tasks that are similar to what they would encounter on the job (e.g., give a presentation, do an excel analysis, create a brochure). They record their responses over video or submit text answers and attachments, giving employers higher quality information than a resume.
Candidates submit resumes because companies ask for them. So until that changes, we will be stuck with the standard, static resume. However, employers are slowly finding and utilizing some of these innovative services which one can only hope will put the final nail in the coffin of the paper resume. Now if we can just bring ALF back.
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