How to Shed Your Resume's Invisibility Cloak

My esteemed colleague Don Orlando recently wrote an article for the Professional Association of Resume Writers monthly newsletter that asked the question, “Does Your Resume Wear an Invisibility Cloak?”

While Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak helped him through a variety of challenging and dangerous situations, an invisibility cloak around your resume is the very last thing you want in any job market, particularly in today’s brutally competitive scene.

Long gone are the days when the resume was just a dry listing of employment dates, titles, and responsibilities. Even before the Web and digital transmission of resumes began to play an important role in hiring, resumes had evolved into powerful self-marketing tools—at least those resumes that afforded their candidates any reasonable chance of success in the job market.

As online job boards and candidate sourcing became the rage, as Don so aptly put it, “the digital dump truck backed up to the hapless employer’s email and overloaded him with résumés still stuck in the past.” Those whose resumes sold the employer on what could be delivered by that candidate afforded some advantage, but suffered along with the rest—covered in the invisibility cloak provided by hundreds if not thousands of other submissions.

Harris Interactive’s poll of employers in June of 2009 indicated that a whopping 45% of employers now use social networking sites to source job candidates, completely bypassing the traditional post a job, then weed through the resumes submitted or found by keyword search scenario. This is a huge increase from 22% only one year previously.

So it would appear that the key to what is termed “digital visibility” is not just to post your resume on the Web, but to build a presence spanning social media, industry association, and topical forum websites—“hang out” where your colleagues and superiors in your field do. Comment on relevant blogs, and/or maintain your own blog.  Engage others (including recruiters who lurk on these sites) in meaningful conversations, and at some point you will be asked to provide your resume, blissfully free of its invisibility cloak.

Posted by: Laurie Smith

Comments

[Michael Queally]

Good posting Laurie. I hear from people on a regular basis who have a significant online presence through their blog and their use of social media as part of their job search strategy. I have noticed less effort going into resumes on the part of some job seekers in the hope that their online presence will be sufficient. I think this is a dangerous trap to fall into as most potential employers continue to ask for a resume almost as if the process is incomplete without a resume.