Posts Tagged ‘Calif.’
From Resume To Resume Video – In A Few Short Years !
As legend has it, Leonardo DaVinci created the first professional resume in 1482. For what purpose, I’m not sure, but it is likely he needed a real job, as did many unsung artists in history. Would that all historical greats had created a resume video for us to view!
Since then, the traditional resume hasn’t changed all that much, unfortunately:
Section 1: Name and Address
Section 2: Objective Statement
Section 3: Chronological Work History
Section 4: Education
The only significant addition in the last 20 years has been the introduction of KEYWORDS into the text of the resume, and that is only because computers are reading resumes now instead of people. A “Section 5” has been added in many online resumes that is simply a long string of words and phrases such as “C++, SQL, project management, PMP, program management….”.
With the advent of MySpace, Facebook, and Linkedin, the physical appearance of job candidates came back into play along with previously taboo data like age, lists of friends and hobbies, and various substance intake preferences.
And then it was a short stretch from photos to video. YouTube capitalized on this trend of ‘full disclose’ by the younger generations, and the first round of the YouTube Resume Video started to appear in 2006.
The Resume Video so far has no rules, no restrictions, and no governing standards board. They range from a simple talking head (a head and shoulders view of a candidate reading their resume out loud) to animated pleas for jobs and then more recently to professional productions that present many facets of a person’s work background, skill sets, and personality.
Early on, the human resources departments of many of the larger corporations balked at the viewing or use of any type of resume video out of fear of potential discrimination claims by those who were not selected based on something in their video. Employment attorneys counseled companies to “just say no” to the resume video in an effort to avoid even the slightest possibility of discrimination claims.
“‘Just don’t even deal with them,’ said Dennis Brown, an attorney in the San Jose, Calif., office of Littler Mendelson whose firm recently advised employers about the dangers of video résumés at a seminar.”
But in the 2007 Video Resume Survey by Vault.com, “89% of employers revealed that they would watch a video resume if it were submitted to them”.
So, it is 2009, and bloggers are proclaiming that perhaps the initial paranoia was premature, since there has not been one discrimination case yet due to a resume video. In addition, it appears as if companies may be saving money by not flying as many candidates in for interviews, and not having to put them up in hotels, or pay for cabs or parking. Then too, their interview teams are not wasting as much time in group interviews only to find out in the first 5 minutes that the candidate was not a corporate culture match at all.
Like it or not, the resume video is not going away. The good news is that they are morphing to include other pieces of due diligence – the electronic resume, links to annual reviews or portfolios, shortcuts to their social media profiles, reference checks and endorsements – in order to provide a cross section of candidate assets. In addition, the trend is away from the simple “resume video” and more towards “video interviews”, wherein the job seeker is not necessarily talking about his/her chronological history of jobs, but is answering behavioral and situational interview questions, much like those asked in a typical face-to-face interview.
As you can see in the History of the Resume chart, the pace of change has gone from centuries to months in the last few years. Technology integration has reached a point where multi-media is not just an entertaining YouTube video any more, but a true collection of multiple electronic data pieces all in one place at one time.
Just had to mention that, in a funny turn of events, YouTube videos are now teaching people how to write paper resumes. Technology marches on.