True
story: my path to last week's SMB event was as follows. A few weeks
ago, as I struggled over another update to my job search materials, I
cried out in frustration: "I hate my resume!" So at that moment, I
Googled for "social media+resume", which in turn led me to this and
this and this.
Aha, I cried (okay, thought), here are some people who are on this. The essential problems with the traditional resume are manifold, but two big ones are:
a)
it's flat, a dead-end. Better tool for weeding people out (not this
one) than it is for zooming in (ok, I'm interested in this one,let me
find out more).
b) even though hand-offs of resumes
today are overwhelmingly electronic, the resume's print-world origins
make it really badly suited for that purpose. The heartbreak of mangled
Word docs leading to frustration for all involved.
So
I'm pretty ready to hear what these guys are saying about creating a
new professional practice of self-presentation in the Web 2.0 world,
one that's more closely tied to examples of your recent work and
thought and valuable, ongoing conversations within your
profession--more "showing" and less "telling" as they urge in the
creative world.
Before I get entirely
carried away on the happy of social media as a replacement though, it
is useful to look at some limits and caveats.
I
had an interesting conversation at my table with two recruiters, Grace
and Debbie, that grew out of the agenda: as people in the business of
hiring, but not in the business of running a Web 2.0 business, how did
they view and use social media?