Jazz up CV with online links, multimedia

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[dhilipkumar]

Jazz up CV with online links, multimedia

When Hyderabad’s Arti Malhotra, a software designer, learnt her company was soon going belly up, she knew it was time to move on. But she was also aware that finding another job in the current economic gloom wasn’t going to be easy.

“My resume had to have a little extra to give me an edge. That’s when I decided to play with the social media resume format.” Social media resume or SMR is a media format of your paper resume. The term was coined for a narrative bio where media elements such as video or MP3s created by you can do the talking instead of simple text.

Christopher S Penn first coined the term in February 2008 and even produced a sample in Google Pages (cspenn.googlepages.com). This is what inspired Malhotra who took only two months to land a plus job at a bigger firm after her SMR debuted on the web. “The biggest advantage of SMR is that you’re able to paint a completely different portrait of yourself for hiring managers and customise it to reflect you as a person,” says Malhotra.

With the inclusion of various multimedia elements, sharing options, integrated social networking feeds and the same elements you’d find in a traditional resume, you are better equipped for success.

Multimedias' key:

As the name suggests the most important aspect of a SMR is, of course, multimedia. This not just makes your resume more interesting and colourful, but also allows your audience to see you in a more complete way than via the text format.

To create this multimedia, you can take help of sites such as wordpress com or googlepages com. Here are some ideas on what multimedia files you can add to your resume.Upload introductory videos of you answering basic interview questions and talking about your achievements. Add videos or MP3s of talks or seminars you recently conducted.

Embed photos of you meeting and greeting important players in your industry . Bung in audio testimonials from previous clients and colleagues.

[dhilipkumar]

Add pointers:

Another good idea is to provide plenty of pointers to your online persona. Your online presence is made up of social or professional networking sites such as LinkedIn or Facebook profiles.

Pointers to these are important if you want potential clients and employers to get a feel of your personality and work ethics. This also allows them to see your connections, giving them an idea of the type of people you're used to working with.

However, make sure to clean up all your social networking sites. Since this information is public and searchable, you want to make sure that anything remotely offensive is removed before linking it to your social media resume. After all, you don’t want your prospective employer going through your embarrassing drunk pictures.

Another big advantage of SMR is that it can be shared. Since no photocopying or faxing is required, just a few clicks and it can be passed on so make sure you insert a URL on as many networking sites as possible. You never know who will stumble upon it where.

Play with keywords:

It’s the age of search engines. You might want to play around with keywords. For example, if you are looking for a public relations position and the words “public relations” aren’t listed anywhere on your resume, your chances of being found by a public relations recruiter decrease drastically. Think about what words describe you the best in the industry and sprinkle these generously in your online SMR.

Employer-speak:

What do employers think of the format? “Frankly, even if a job doesn't require too much tech knowhow, these do a much better job than a paper resume in revealing a candidate’s ability to communicate effectively, an essential skill for a pretty large segment of the job market. So basically, I can’t really see any downside to it,” says Sai Gundavelli, founder and CEO of Solix Technologies.

Finally, whatever multimedia you include, make sure you don’t overdo it. Putting too many photos and videos will make your resume take longer to load. So if you really want people to access additional multimedia, simply put a link to separate pages where they can be viewed (such as a YouTube account or a Flickr album).

[IT Acumens Discussion Zone]