And I’d love to hear Jeff Skrentny’s take on this if he’d quit rooting for the Cubs long enough to let the Cardinals catch up. I am expecting to walk into a public restroom soon and find some guy passing out DVDs to use for the ‘clean-up’ process. I have nothing against any of these people trying to bring us the future but it needs to make sense and whatever new offering they have must do something BETTER than it is already being done. I don’t even need to debate the utility of a video resume here. Many of us could easily argue both sides but plain old resumes do the job so well that Rokos is likely to be irrelevant for a long time. Who remembers CD Business Cards that we were to stick into our computer drives from about 5 years ago? I’d like anyone to set a reminder in their software to email me 1 year from now so I can either gloat or flog myself when we see how FutureResume is doing. I LOVE technology. I can’t wait for the next Treo or something that looks like it could beat it. I even buy a new PC sometimes on the same theory that Spinal Tap had 11 on their amps but I don’t see why some of these entrepreneurs don’t focus on real problems like our office being in a class A building but unable to get more than 1.5mb DSL when all our neighbors have more. The way the rest of America and I are all getting so fat , I’d rather see Virtual Reality glasses that make me see only hot and buff people and make them cheap enough that I can hand them to people who meet with me instead of making it possible for them to dismiss me when they see that I no longer look like I did when I was 30, which I am told, was pretty good. I love working with the scientist types in our practice. I really get to see interesting and innovative technologies. Most of these new things are neither interesting nor innovative. We are just seeing people putting together bits of stuff that have been around forever. Actors NEED a picture on the back of their resumes. Engineers don’t, Accountants don’t. Most people don’t. Lunch is over. Now I get to go back to something I love even more than ranting. And THERE’s a good piece of technology…Computers that make it possible to rant to everyone at once that ,at the same time, make it possible for all of them to ignore me if they want. It’s ALL good!
FutureResume.com? I feel a mini-rant coming on…
July 23rd, 2008
My bio is on http://www.pinnaclesociety.org
1 comment
Jerry Albright Jul 23, 2008 at 3:13 pm
Nice Dave. I love a good rant. Especially when half of it is on target!
Have resumes been doing the job since the first drop of ink hit the papyrus centuries ago? Sure they have. But then again most systems have been “doing the job” for years and years until something better comes along.
Do resumes need to change? You. Bet.
But video resumes? No. Not in this lifetime.
I’ve got nothing against the companies trying to push that idea forward - but it’s just not practical right now. Client companies are not at all jumping on the bandwagon.
Picture a REAL candidate in the video rather than the model the agency hired for that shoot. Kinda changes the feel of a video resume, doesn’t it? Don’t get me wrong - I’ve got nothing against beautiful people and she certainly qualifies. I just have to admit - most the folks I place are more than likely NOT hotties. Or hunks. They’re just regular people.
And regular people don’t have to be SEEN to demonstrate their communication style, address their fit for a particular role or give you a sense of their personality, humor and general character. I think that once you introduce “what someone looks like” you’ve started a beauty contest that most hiring managers don’t want to personally judge.
But you DO need to HEAR them. A piece of paper simply DOESN’T get that point across. No way. No how. They all look the same.
I just listened to Recruiting Animal discuss marketing with his guest Richard Becker. One point brought up several times was “look at your competitors and find a way to differentiate yourself”.
We are all sending resumes like sheep.
The resume has GOT TO CHANGE. Period. We are all scrambling to adapt the latest technologies to our recruting/sourcing/tracking approach. Many firms are spending thousands (tens of thousands…) on their on-line recruiting and employment branding efforts…..only to then pass along the same-old lame Word resume the same way they’ve been doing it for years.
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