Do you have time for a visual resume?

This article originally appeared in my employer's e-newsletter to external clients.

Do you have time for a visual resume?

Many of our student clients feel a great deal of pressure to stand out from their peers. Creating a distinct resume or portfolio is one of the methods that they could use to make an impression on an employer. But do human resource professionals have the time to view these resumes? Is a visual resume the correct method an applicant should use to stand out?

Websites for creating a visual resume

Though an applicant could create a free online presentation of their resume using a free website hosting service, such as Google Sites, or could upload a slide presentation of their resume on Slideshare, at least three start ups have created a visual resume tool. Visualize.me and re.vu both create an infographic-style rendering of a person’s resume, based on the user’s LinkedIn profile. Visualize.me allows the user to create a badge for their personal website that connects to their “vizualized” resume, as well as uploading the link to the profile on a variety of social networks. The re.vu resume includes candidate’s name, headline and highlights, as well as a career timeline. A link to the resume can be pushed out to Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

However, how many new candidates have been discovered by employers clicking on theses badges? If any have turned into interviews, how many of them were new grads?

Resume on a T-shirt

The company Resume T-shirts will print a T-shirt for a person with their resume on the back, while the front of the shirt has the tagline “resume attached”. Each T-shirt costs 19.99 (US), fairly affordable for most students, or possibly a gift from a parent. Personally, I could see myself tormenting my high school age relatives with one of these, but I’m not sure if they would get any summer job offers from the T-shirts. If you saw a person in the line at a grocery store wearing their resume on their back, would you be interested in following up?

Combining visual resumes with career planning

The startup Resumup allows users to create a visual resume and then generate a chart that will show the user the steps they need to take to progress to the next level in their career. You can view a YouTube demonstration of the career mapping process, since while they are still in private beta, you need to solicit three friends to join their service before you can use the career mapping tool.

Not only does the site suggest the steps you need to take to progress from entry-level to supervisor or manager in your chosen profession, it will also scan your connections, either on LinkedIn or Facebook, to see if you can find a mentor or advisor. This augmented visual resume may actually help graduates determine how they could progress in their career, and might be something that could be used at an employer presentation. However, until it is out of private beta and has enough members to generate good career planning advice, the idea may be excellent but the execution may not be effective.

Based on the examples provided, would you be likely to contact a candidate based on a visual resume, would it make a difference if it was an online badge or a T-shirt, and would this method work for your current recruitment needs?

SimplyHired Job Seeker Report

Last month, SimplyHired released their Today's Job Seeker Report, to explore and explain the behavior of job seekers--which will help HR professionals post jobs.

As far as the assistance for job seekers, the report breathlessly states that 86% of job seekers look for work on the Internet. Not a surprise--we look for everything, including TV, spouses and wart cream--on the Internet. But what most job seekers should get out of this report is that networking still works--with 37% reporting that they got their last job through networking--and so few job seekers do it, with only 32% using networking as a job search strategy. According to the report, more respondents used the newspapers (!) than networking.

But what was really sad about this report: 53% of respondents said that their college major was not relevant to their current career.

TMZ of the recruitment industry?

This article from Workforce looks at some of the bloggers and blogging trends in the HR community. The post includes the obligatory, is the blog dead? questioning, while at the same time revealing how blogs can have a big impact on big industry within recruitment.

Recruitment blogs and HR blogs can be useful for librarians, 1) if they are engaged in HR in their library or 2) if they are teaching others how to search within databases or place their information within databases used by HR.

I have to admit, I loved that description of Cheezhead as the TMZ of the recruitment industry.

Student fails to find job using Twitter and Ebay

Student fails to find job using Twitter and EBay, but the Chronicle reports on it like it's an early sighting of the Second Coming.

Innovative ideas, including posting to celebrity Twitter feeds--though one may call that spam, not so innovative-- but demonstrates my argument that employers have to be looking where you are posting. Works other way for employers in "talent wars".

When will the job market recover?

JobBait has provided an analysis, historical and two forecasts, about when the job recovery will occur.

If you are interested in their data and how they reached the conclusions in their analysis, they will be holding a webinar on July 21, 2009, about the analysis. If you work with patrons who are wondering about the job market, or are interested in labor market analysis yourself, you may want to sign up for the webinar.

Monster's revenue is down

In an earlier post, I suggested that sounding the death knell for Monster.com was a bit premature and that comparing Monster to newspapers did not describe the full scope of Monster's services to employers, which are broader than traditional newspaper classifieds, and greater than the services offered by Craigslist.

Well, Monster reported their Q-1 results last month and though sales are down in relation to a weak market (fewer jobs to post, purchase less advertising--or at least, limit advertising to your own site), and their revenues are down. But it's not like they're bleeding to death:

Total revenue declined 31% to $254 million (26% excluding currency effects and acquisitions) (Source: Toronto Star).

A tiny sliver of this loss may also be accounted for in people using LinkedIn or Twitter to post available jobs. I wouldn't attribute it to competition from vertical search engines.

Job Angels

ERE has a post about a recruiter who is using his Twitter network to help "just one person" find a job.

This can work for librarians if you use two methods: one, library recruiters and HR managers share out their postings on Twitter, or, two, a local network is posting jobs that will help people they are connected to. In both methods, you need to have people subscribed to your tweets to get connected to the postings (a if the bird chirps in the forest and no one is around, does it make a sound? Web 2.0 conundrum).

Moving up dates for job offers

Though librarians are not specifically mentioned in this article, there are some librarians who will be interviewing for tenure track positions and this may be a trend that will affect the whole: moving up the dates for offers (as early as the end of January).

Other trends that will affect interviews:

• More telephone and VOIP interviews to deal with the rising cost of paying to fly in candidates.
• Need a teaching demonstration? You may be asked to create one and submit it to YouTube. Another way to keep travel costs down.
• More interviews at conferences, to do double-duty of networking and recruiting, or a decrease in conference attendance, since money may have to be allocated for increased travel costs. In the latter case, expect more online conferences and less in-person conferences.
  

Can you think of something else that will, or already has, affected interviews and job offers?