At a recent webinar I conducted, which was about building your verbal brand through your résumé, LinkedIn, and other avenues, during the Q&A time one question came up that struck me: With the growing use of LinkedIn, your own personal website, and Facebook, etc., is the résumé becoming obsolete?
Good question!
My webinar was about building your verbal brand starting with your résumé. There, I was not referring to the traditional “backward” looking résumé that most people create—what I call a Jurassic résumé—but I was referring to its newer reincarnation in view of the upheaval in today’s job market. In that part of the discussion I presented a novel approach that I have developed over the years that has received good traction. I call this innovation an Inductive résumé. Its design allows you to craft a message about tomorrow (compared to how a traditional résumé does that about “yesterday”), which can help you transition into a different career or move forward with greater propulsion in your current one. The design of the résumé “induces” the reader to see beyond what is obvious and to look at the candidate with a different insight. I have done this for my own career changes (four so far) and with thousands of my clients, who have worked with me in their own career changes and advancements during the past 10 years.
In response to this question I provided the following guidance:
- A résumé is a foundation—a canvas—for building your strong message. Although the traditional résumé design has not changed despite tectonic shifts in the job market and with the emergence of social media (a’ la LinkedIn) during the past 10 or so years, a more appropriate résumé design still has an important place in today’s professional zeitgeist.
- Using a story-telling approach to craft your accomplishments (short 3-4 line narratives that capture your leadership stories and that intrigue the reader, instead of the traditional one-line cryptic bullets), a résumé can have much greater impact on a reader. Taking the time and effort to build a strong stand-alone message is important to develop the confidence in how you present your story in a compelling résumé.
- The act of writing a soulful résumé provides you a canvas on which to paint a colorful (and accurate) picture of your leadership accomplishments. This artful creation can then serve well as a springboard for your other narratives such as your bio, LinkedIn Profile, and other postings, which should complement your résumé.
- Your résumé can be shopped around discreetly when you are trying to protect your current job. Most update their LinkedIn profile only when they are actively looking, which can compromise their campaign.
- Keeping your résumé to two pages that are well presented with your leadership stories forces you to be disciplined about how you communicate your unique value proposition, despite having to craft bullets that are longer than what people typically see in a traditional résumé.
- For someone with any seniority (7-10 years’ experience or more) it is easy to have more than one résumé. For example, a senior software engineer can have a résumé with a focus on software development and another one with project management experience to launch a parallel campaign.
- LinkedIn allows you one Profile summary, which must convey a single message. It is difficult to showcase more than one main message because of this design. Also, if you want to move in a new direction this design makes it difficult to create an “inductive message.”
- When applying for jobs a résumé with a cover letter still serve as a standard. The same holds true during job interviews. People talk about your accomplishments during such interviews with your paper résumé (or a digital screen version) in front of them. This is a convenient and accepted way to have a discussion about your accomplishments.
- A well-designed and well-presented résumé creates a visual impact that is difficult to replicate.
- A well-presented résumé gives you a complementary approach to your campaign (“push”) to what your LinkedIn Profile provides (“pull”).
The power of an Inductive résumé was vivified yet again a few weeks back when a client effectively used it to go from a senior manager position at an established company to a vice president at a rapidly growing company in a different vertical (jumping up two levels, and getting a salary package to match. He also learned about executive presence in the process!). Using a traditional résumé design this would have been unthinkable. When it comes to presenting your work history and the past, the new digital avenues—LinkedIn among them—have provided means for reliable information about a candidate that was often lacking in résumés. Yet despite that edge a well-presented résumé is here to stay for some time, so be prepared!
Good luck!