Yesterday I talked about the value of a professional resume, where I quoted a recruiter who said “Good writers … are … worth every dollar invested in my opinion.” Very cool insight from someone who probably looks at thousands of resumes each month.
Recently on my JibberJobber blog I wrote a post titled Why Resumes are Relevant (and will be for a long time). My argument is simple: resumes are relevant because they are a part of the hiring process. Until they are not asked for, they will continue to be relevant. Can you envision the day when HR, recruiters and hiring managers don’t ask for a resume? I can’t.
More interesting, however, were the comments. There is talk about the impact of technology (think LinkedIn) on the traditional resume, as well as the role of a resume in a job search.
Deb Dib’s comment caught my attention, as Deb works with very senior level executives in the job search. Of interest she says:
The problem with typical resumes, as I see it (after 20 years as a resume writer and coach), is that jobseekers 1) write historical “job graveyards” rather than targeted marketing documents, and 2) they use these ineffective resumes as a crutch (I have a resume, it’s on-line, I’ll get interviews).
and
BTW, my senior exec clients are getting great results using one-page exec summaries (micro-resumes) and/or one-page value-driven bios (as Glenn mentioned above) as their “point of entry.” Often a resume is never requested. If it is they have it, but it’s usually not the gateway to their contacts. More often a series of brief case studies of their best accomplishments is more valued by the decision maker.
and then she closes with:
A trend to watch? Who knows, but relying on “just a resume” is not smart job search!
So two questions I have are:
- Where does the resume fit in, consider you use LinkedIn, etc., and
- HOW do you use your resume? How you used it in the past might not be the right way to use it in today’s job search!
I’m not going to answer that for YOU, but these are two questions that you better think about. I didn’t, and I contribute 99% of my job search failure to not understanding the answers to these two questions.
