Take Your Résumé and Shove It

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Pros and cons

This approach is great if you're looking for someone in tech, but less so if you're trying to hire a surgeon, for instance.

Also, although you get a much more in-depth look at people, many folks adopt personalities online that may represent only a narrow portion of their totalities, so the picture may be skewed.

Finally, there is still value to Mies van der Rohe's "less is more" as represented bu having to distill your entire life's essence into a single side of an 8 1/2 by 11 inch sheet of paper (my college English professors had to hammer away at me to get me to write LESS in my essays).

So, having buried the lead yet again, I have to summarize by saying, in my usual wishy-washy way, that while online profiles can have great value, the good old résumé is not retiring anytime soon.

Alfonso del Granado of IL @ Jan 31, 2009 12:17:09 PM

Great Article

I keep telling this to everyone, I just dont have the gift of writing to get it out. YOU SAID IT PERFECTLY !!

:)

Maria Ackermann of FL @ Jan 31, 2009 11:52:07 AM

Take Your Résumé and Shove It

Liz,

Take this guy's hiring approach and shove it.

He's just trying to be "different" and show his own boss that he's thinking "outside the box."

The reality is that most 'real' HR departments and hiring managers (who aren't trying to show they're "outside the box.") are still using the old tried and true resume to review and assess people.

Your creativity in putting out a resume that is tasteful, clever, informative and targets the opportunity is how you get the interview. Or at least the phone interview. Clever blogging and social networking only get you so far... then you have to evidence job-specific knowledge and have good interpersonal skills.

This whole blogosphere as job-entry point is BS. Aaron derserves whatever he gets from that approach.

Mike

Mike of NY @ Dec 07, 2008 20:47:12 PM

A unique way of screening job candidates

Hi Janet,

What do you think of this approach to hiring? I think it opens a huge can of worms, but maybe I'm just being old fashioned!

Marguerite

Marguerite of MA @ May 03, 2008 18:43:32 PM

Consider me grateful!

Liz - thank you so much for taking the time to do this interview with me. It's been a fascinating journey as many folks have reached out to me in show of support for this experiment in recruiting. To that end, I look forward to continuing our conversation!

If anyone else is interested in talking more about this new way of recruiting, I encourage you to reach out to me on Twitter (my user name is "astrout").

Best,

Aaron

Aaron Strout of MA @ May 02, 2008 09:15:53 AM

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