Is the Traditional Resume Dead?

Is the paper resume and its MS Word version dead? That is the question I am asking myself after being introduced to the site VisualCV.com.

This past week Joshua Waldman, a social media expert with Career Enlightenment, made a presentation to the job search group I facilitate regarding leveraging social media sites to find a job faster. In Joshua’s presentation, he introduced the group to the site VisualCV.com and explained how to capitalize on this new technology with other sites like LinkedIn or Twitter. VisualCV is a dynamic site that allows you to post documents, videos, links and logos to reinforce your experience and skills that are found on your resume. For example, you could post the PowerPoint marketing presentation to VisualCV to reinforce your marketing project accomplishment that you have listed in the resume.

You can create customized versions of your VisualCV to send to particular companies or positions and make them private so that only the appropriate people can view their respective customized version. You can link your VisualCV to your LinkedIn profile. You can respond to a Twitter job posting instantly with your VisualCV. Imagine having a conversation with a networking connection and passing your VisualCV via your iPhone to him or her right there.

Since a picture is a thousand words, I encourage you to check out Joshua's VisualCV site as an example.

While the old MS Word version may not be dead just yet, in the near future it will be time to consider listing it on the Federal Endangered Species Act.