This week, I am sharing resources that will help you with your resumes, cover letters, and other job application materials, based on a request included in the midterm evaluations you submitted.
With yesterday’s infographic on robot readers, you might think that an online presence on LinkedIn will give you have you need in the job market. No such luck. You need LinkedIn AND a resume to succeed.
The Harvard Business Review’s “Do You Need a Résumé in the LinkedIn Era?” explains, “When you are actually applying for a job, however, neither LinkedIn nor a professional landing page can replace the résumé. A strong résumé is still the gateway to an interview….”
Read more in the Harvard Business Review’ post, where you will also find tips on ways to use LinkedIn and personal websites.
Image credit: Linkedin Chocolates by Nan Palmero on Flickr, used under a CC-BY 2.0 license.
7 Comments
Trying to put this example into an analogy, it’s like an online newspaper versus a paper copy. Online news can be updated within minutes, whereas a physical newspaper is only recent to the day. Some people prefer having a hard copy newspaper, whereas some are fine with reading the news online in the morning, on their phone or tablet, or watch it on T.V. That’s just based on popularity and ease of access, and price. My dad still prefers to read a paper copy and pays to get the newspaper delivered to him everyday, because it is tradition, and what he is used to. Personally, I would rather read news online than have to pay for the paper to come to my house. Right now I think these online resources for networking and resumes are relatively new, so a lot of companies will still accept/prefer paper resumes because of the status quo that is set. I guarantee that in 30-40 years paper resumes will not longer be the norm, and everything will be conducted online. We even see now that many companies do skype interviews because it saves on costs, and it gives employers the relatively same idea of the person and how they interact with others, without having to spend travel and housing costs.
I agree with you completely about what you had to say! I feel like a lot of the older generation still likes to receive a paper copy of the newspaper every morning (I know my dad prefers this), meanwhile the younger generation just prefers to receive their news from what they see online or on T.V. Many people that are higher up in a company are usually older compared to most people at the company. These are the people (the higher up people in the company) who hirer new employees, so many of them are still used to how things were commonly done in the past with the use of a paper resume. However, I believe that times are changing, and soon enough job applications and resume will just be an online thing and there will be no need to print out a paper copy of a resume. With a site like LinkedIn, someone’s resume and information can be updated frequently. Meanwhile a paper copy resume as soon as it is printed some of the information might be a little outdated.
I agree, it’s easier to read the news online than it is in the physical paper. But I think there are some important differences between that and resumes/Linkedin. With the paper and online news, you’re getting the same content in the same format, for the most part. But there’s such a personal touch to resumes that I think is extremely important that you just can’t do with Linkedin. Remember when we had a post about infographics for resumes (I think)? That seems highly unreproducible with Linkedin. There’s no real sense of aesthetics online, which is important for graphic designers and other artistic jobs. I also find Linkedin too structured–there are things I have on my resume that I really can’t figure out how to put in Linkedin. There’s no real flexibility in how resume components are ordered, so the advice that the previous video this week gave would be moot–you can’t switch education and experience. Personally, I hope that the resume stays for a long time. I find it to be a lot more telling about a person than their Linkedin page.
Yeah, I completely agree with everything people have been saying. I think for practical reasons people tend to get news and other information electronically. It’s also probably easier to sift through resumes when it’s online instead of having a stack in front of you. Personally, I’m more old school and kind of prefer the paper way of doing things (writing notes etc) and I don’t think that that will necessarily go out of style.
While I agree this analogy checks out, I don’t think paper newspapers or paper resumes will ever go out of style. While getting your news online is convenient, there are many pros to having a print version of the news. In the same way, paper resumes make comparisons between resumes much easier because all the applicants’ resumes can be laid out on a table or desk for a side by side comparison that would only be possible with six or seven screens full of digital copies of the same resumes.
I think the comparison to the online and print newspaper is good but can be over-simplified. I think that definitely things will change over the years towards online resumes and paper resumes. But currently, LinkedIn and physical resumes fulfill different purposes. LinkedIn is mostly a networking tool that does display your resume, but it also creates a positive professional presence online. Your LinkedIn profile is also not tailored to specific positions because it just summarizes your experience and credentials. On the other hand, resumes are tailored to what position you are seeking. I don’t foresee paper resumes becoming obsolete in the near future because they are so important and networking events and career fairs.
I do believe there are few things that Linked-In or website cannot cover the stuff that resume can. First of all, you can customize the resume for each companies. Each job description from each company has slightly different requirements and expectations even if the job position is similar. Therefore, by making different versions of resume (even if the different is not that significant) still makes competitive job application. On the other hand, for Linked-in profile, is open to everyone. Therefore, it is way harder for the user to create the profile suitable for exact one position when the user is trying to apply more than one job from specific company. Secondly, one of the beauty of the Linked-in profile is that the application is not limited to length. So that you can put any many as small details as many as you want. Therefore, the employer can have full footprint of the professional career. On contrary, resume gives the brief and considerably important information about the candidate. With numerous number of candidate, the employer will prefer brief, concise, and well organized format to not miss the important detail. Because with too many information, even if all of them are valid, may disturb the primary information critical to the application