Why Your Resume Alone Isn’t Getting You Hired
Posted July 8, 2014 & filed under Job Search, Resume
Is the resume dead? Not yet, but the job search is changing fast. 94 percent of all recruiters use LinkedIn and social media tools to fill open positions. Online retailer Zappos now avoids traditional resumes. It seems you can no longer get by with a clean and concise CV alone. These days, you need a pinch of advertising savvy to get a job.
The good news? You don’t have to do anything but talk about what you know and love.
Don’t Overload Your Resume
How can you show employers the full magnitude of your knowledge? It’s not through your resume.
Employers only look them over for about six seconds. Even then, they’re just skimming.
Dense information gets your resume overlooked, plain and simple. However, there’s a way to show off your expertise without overloading employers.
Elevate Your Status to Industry Expert
You’ve probably heard some people referred to as industry experts. It’s not a title conferred upon them by some authoritative tribunal. An industry expert gets to be called that because of peer perception. That’s all it is.
Most industry experts have just found a way to make their voice heard and have reaped the rewards of talking about what they know and love. So the first step is becoming present in the industry roll-call. Here’s how to do it.
- Start your own blog – A study by Go-Gulf found that online users spend 20 percent of all online time reading content. That’s only slightly behind social media time and online search time. If you decide to do it, there are plenty of resources to help you get started. Though geared towards businesses, this blog post from HubSpot is just as relevant for individuals looking to collect and generate interesting ideas.
- Publish LinkedIn Pulse posts – You don’t have to be a LinkedIn Influencer anymore to get your voice heard. LinkedIn users can soon access the feature and post original long-form articles that are searchable both on and off of the LinkedIn site. That means you can build your reputation both organically through your 2nd and 3rd degree contacts while increasing how searchable you are online. Here is the official LinkedIn overview.
- Create YouTube videos – Depending on your industry, a vlog on YouTube can be a great way to get employers and recruiters interested. If you’re in an IT or engineering field, step-by-step instruction is a great way to show employers your problem-solving skills in action. Or, if you want to go the bold route, take a note from this clever video application to Google.
- Record and post a podcast – A good podcast can be compelling, informative, and easy to consume on the go. The average American commute time is 25.4 minutes one-way (if you’re curious to see the average in your area, check out this interactive map). At the end of the day, that’s almost an hour of time to kill and you can help fill that gap. Podcasts, though still relatively new, are listened to by 18 percent of U.S. adults, which is double that of 2010. Find the right topic and collaborate with the right people, and you can expand your reach considerably.
Though all of these tools aren’t an instant cure to your job search woes, they can help to increase your reach and even encourage some recruiters to approach you.
by James Walsh
