Why the Resume Isn’t Dead …Yet

September 14, 2011

Earlier this week, my colleague, Nick Petri, wrote about the death of the print newspaper.  His post got me thinking about resumes.  There is no denying the fact that the paper version of the resume has long been laid to rest.  But has the traditional resume died all together?

With the emergence of social networks, companies and job seekers are being forced to evolve how they interact with each other.  Social media has empowered candidates to design creative “Hire ME!” campaigns in the hopes of standing-out from a crowd of qualified applicants, particularly in today’s competitive job market.  Candidates (and employers) have realized that simply hitting “Submit Resume” on a corporate careers page isn’t enough.

Bianca Cadloni gets that.  Bianca, a 2010 University of North Colorado grad, really wants to work for burrito-giant Chipotle. Last week, she launched her Hire Me Chipotle campaign and has already garnered more than 111 followers on Twitter.  She’s even had a few direct exchanges with “Joe” from Chipotle corporate via @ChipotleTweets.  As of Wednesday morning, she still hadn’t gotten an interview, but I guarantee you that while her resume may have gotten lost in the mix, her candidacy has not gone unnoticed.

Believe it or not, Bianca’s campaign is just one of several targeted campaigns that have gone viral in the last year. Take Matthew Epstein’s Google Please Hire.Me campaign, which also included a professionally produced video explaining exactly why he should be Google’s next product marketing manager.  Okay, so Google didn’t hire him, but in the span of three weeks he received more than 700,000 visitors to his site, 80 invitations from other companies that wanted him to interview, and three job offers.    There’s also Braden Young of @HireMeKrspyKrme fame who used Twitter and Facebook to get his dream job.  He also designed the most interesting cover letter I’ve ever seen.  And guess what?  In a matter of just a few weeks, Braden was the newest sales and marketing manager of the Krispy Kreme in Philadelphia.

Not convinced?  What about Eric Romer from HeadBlade or Sam Mallikarjunan at HubSpot?  They also both got their dream jobs with the companies they targeted.  Admittedly, I’m not sure if any of these companies actually asked the candidates for a copy of their resume after seeing their blogs, Twitter feeds, or Facebook pages.  And yet, on their respective sites, each candidate provided a fairly obvious link to their resume.  The resume is our safety net.  It’s how companies and candidates know how to engage and, at least initially, test one another’s interest and commitment.

So yes, the resume is here to stay, in one manner, shape or form.  RezScore, an online tool that will decode and grade your resume, recently created a timeline detailing the modern history of the resume.  Over the last 500 years, the resume has reinvented itself over a dozen a times .  Skeptics have predicted its death at numerous moments throughout the course of history, but every so-often, the resume finds a new way to keep it’s hold throughout the employer/job seeker courtship.  As candidates continue to develop as savvy competitors in a difficult job market, we can expect to see more creative ways of displaying their skills (er, resume) to prospective employers. And while, online profiles, targeted blogs, and video resumes may soon replace what we have always known as the resume, they will be, in reality, a more pleasant form of its cumbersome predecessor.

So is the resume dead?   I don’t think so.  At least, not yet.

Park Square Executive Search

Jessica Ray previously was responsible for recruiting initiatives for both the firm and its portfolio companies. Currently, Jessica is a Senior Associate at Park Square Executive Search <a href="http://www.parksquare.com/">Park Square Executive Search</a>.