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 This article asserts that the resume has died and is being replaced by an online bio. I'm in the academic arena, so I have a website with my CV, published works, and presentations. What about in the corporate world? Is the resume a dying document?

http://the99percent.com/tips/7025/The-Resume-Is-Dead-The-Bio-Is-King

 

 

quietlife4me's picture
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This is focused on folks that follow the latest social media bent of needing a "personal brand". I couldn't care less what your personal brand or bio says. Give me a resume or pound sand. This isn't about you and your "bio/brand". This is about what you can do for the company. Keep your bio for your blog/Facebook/LinkedIn page.

Where this _might_ make sense is in the truly creative arena that has never really used resumes anyway. Apply this to IT, Finance, Legal and you'll get laughed at.

Even better advice would be to build your network. Then you won't need a resume. Use your network to get your next job, and your resume or bio or "brand" wont mater.

-Tyler

Mark's picture
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The author is promoting his view, and his view is only partially applicable to the audience he intends to reach.

The resume is very much alive, and you shouldn't listen to guys like this author with a background like yours.

Mark

afmoffa's picture

The resume is not dead. But the bio is also important. Think of your business card. Quick, do you want your business card to have your phone number or your E-mail address?

Obviously, you want it to have both.

You still need a one-page resume, and for an academic such as yourself, chances are you might need a one-page list of articles you've written or lectures you've delivered. Plus, per Mark and Mike's advice, you should have a multi-page, "everything but the kitchen-sink" Career Document which has all the details you condense into your one-page resume.

But yeah, you need some sort of on-line bio. And that's trickier, because it exists piecemeal, and a lot of it wasn't written by you. Your on-line bio, roughly speaking, comprises the first five or ten Google results when someone looks up your name. People who read your resume will Google you before they call you for an interview. Count on it. Google is everyone's first character reference these days.

Mark and Mike have talked about going through your Facebook and MySpace profiles and "tidying" them up by deleting pictures of your being drunk at parties, and that's good advice as far as it goes, but hey, it's a Web 2.0 world, and this Manger-Tools site proves it. Your Web bio isn't just a reductive art form. This isn't like sculpting marble, where you chisel out as much of the bad stuff as you can and hope no one finds the bad stuff you can't remove. Your Web bio is also all the good stuff you put up there. 

stephenbooth_uk's picture

...when something more effective comes along to replace it.  Until then we're stuck with it.

Will it die and be replaced in the next 5 years?  I really doubt it barring some major cultural shifts, the sorts of cultural shifts that would be triggered by (or possibly trigger) some sort of global catastrophe.  Will it dies an be replaced in the life span of most MT listeners?  Possible but still doubtful.  Will it die and be replaced?  I have no doubt that it will, eventually.

When my father started work (he was 71 this year) the norm was still, just, that you followed your father into business (unless you went into the armed forces, indeed at the time we still had mandatory national service for all healthy men aged 17 to 21 not in reserved occupations, which my father was), which is what my father did into the GPO (which later became British Telecom).  CVs were around but most people didn't have one, my father didn't write his first CV until his mid-fifties (to apply for a part time job after he had taken early retirement after nearly 40 years with the same employer) and many people in his age group have never had to write one and worked for the same employer from when they left school till they retired.  My father's father took the other common route into work in that he showed an aptitude for math, sciences and, in particular, electronics when the Post Office were looking to recruit trainees to extend the phone network and support the equipment once it was in so his school put him forward.  His father had been in service (a gardener) as had most of his forebears with son following father or uncle into the trade with the occasional foray into bar tending and ownership or mechanical engineering along the way.

 So going back just 60 years gets us to a time when, in the UK at least, the CV or resume would a highly unusual job seeking tool for whole swathes of the population and networking through your parents or school was the norm.  Maybe in 50 years time we will return to that?  Maybe the whole concept of being employed, as we currently understand it, will disappear and your resume will be a list of projects you have worked with what you delivered on and key skills, certifications and qualifications.

So, don't throw away the resume just now.  Just don't be surprised if one day your grandkids or great grandkids ask you "Resuh what?!?"

 

Stephen

 

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Skype: stephenbooth_uk  | DiSC: 6137

"Start with the customer and work backwards, not with the tools and work forwards" - James Womack

 

afmoffa's picture

 This isn't like sculpting marble, where you chisel out as much of the bad stuff as you can and hope no one finds the bad stuff you can't remove. Your Web bio is also all the good stuff you put up there.

So for Pete's sake, make sure you put good stuff up there. Make sure your LinkedIn profile has links to that great article you wrote. Participate in on-line communities germane to your field. Flood Facebook with pictures of you sober and well-groomed volunteering at a community event. And so forth.

robin_s's picture
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in ANY internet forum!  After reading this I googled my name, which usually doesn't produce a lot of results, but this time for some reason I got a couple pages - mostly good, thanks to my company publishing a news release when I was hired, and a couple other positive surprises.  But one negative was a post I made in an online forum over 10 years ago.  It was a rather obscure forum, or so I thought.  But there it is, on page one of what Google presents as *me*.  It's not that bad, just not how I would choose to present myself professionally. 

stephenbooth_uk's picture

 Google have a service called Google Alerts which basically allows you to set up search strings and have the results, since they were last sent, emailed to you periodically (you can chose immediate, tends to be 3 or 4 times a day, daily or weekly).  I have a number of these set up for my name plus other terms that I believe other people are likely to use to try to find me (e.g. places I've lived, places I've worked &c).  This means that I get a heads up whenever something appears on Google related to me (or more usually someone with the same name and similar circumstances, there's a detective/horror/crime writer with the same name as me who has lived most places I've lived but is a bit older than me who comes up quite often).

I try to be careful with anythign going out under any username remotely like my real name (I have usernames tottaly unlike my real name set up for posting stupid stuff).  Doesn't stop daft stuff being posted but at least I know about it.

A caeat for those with a Facebook account, if you get a message you've been tagged in a photo check that it is actually a photo of you.  Be doubly careful if you have friends who think they are funny.  A couple of times I've had to untag myself from a photo that definitely wasn't me  and have a word with the person who tagged the photo as being of me when it was actually of a model and from a 'topshelf' periodical.

 Stephen

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Skype: stephenbooth_uk  | DiSC: 6137

"Start with the customer and work backwards, not with the tools and work forwards" - James Womack