Resume 101: Optimizing Your Resume for Social Media

Over the past several posts we've looked at two very basic lessons in constructing a resume: how to format it and how to write it. Today, we examine an element of resume preparation that is decidedly more contemporary: how to ensure your resume gets noticed in social media.

Social media has entered the recruiting and hiring mix in a big way, according to Jenny Foss, president of Ladder Recruiting Group. In an article on the Life Without Pants blog, she asserts that LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and personal websites/blogs are driving "huge dream results" for job-seekers, but also cautions working professionals against ditching a traditional resume:

"Resumes are not dead. And, they won’t be anytime soon. Regardless of the mass creativity we’re seeing among job seekers today – which is especially marked among GenY talent that grew up whizzing around on the Internet – Corporate America is still, well, mighty corporate and traditional in many sectors. Leaders and decision makers in several pockets of industry still consider weeding through a stack of resumes a mandatory part of the hiring process. They’re still looking for the one who shines on paper, so they may invite them in to see if they shine in real life."

Still, in today's job market, one cannot ignore the fact that employers are judging candidates based partially on their social media presence. Jobing.com's Theresa Maher, quoted in an article on MyFoxPhoenix.com, offered some tips for aligning your social signature with your professional aspirations:

Photos: How are you portrayed? This gives the employer an idea of what you feel is appropriate and what isn't.

Posts: What are you interested in? This gives employers a look into who you are. What do you like, what don't you like? Are they written in correct grammar, etc. This is a peek into your personality.

Comments: Are you always negative? Is there a lot of profanity in your comments? Are you putting people down? Comments on other people's posts can show how you view differing opinions.

Getting social, getting a job
If you've prepared a paper version of your resume and you're ready to branch out, there are some steps you can take to build up a "personal brand" that helps bring recruiters and employers to you (much nicer than the other way around). Dan Schawbel, author of Me 2.0, gave readers of a Mashable post he guest authored a process for creating a social media resume. Here are some excerpts:

1. Start with a website (or blog). You can use Bravenet or GoDaddy to build a site, or Wordpress or Typepad to create a blog-format website.
2. Select a URL (address) for your site that has your name in it - or is easy to freely promote and is easy to remember. Once you've settled on a URL, place it on your paper resume, all your social networks, your business cards and any other marketing materials you create.
3. Decide on the format and design of your site. Schawbel notes that its easy to break your resume sections into differing tabs or pages on your site, and you can expand them significantly from your paper resume.
4. Enhance your resume with multimedia. This could include video or audio files of you answering basic interview questions, recordings of a talk or seminar you conducted, or a podcast you've produced.
5. Integrate your social media profiles. Various platforms offer badges, links or widgets that make sharing across sites easy.
6. Make your resume sharable. You can embed the sharing utilities Share This or Add This to enable readers to share in multiple ways.

Examples of social media resumes:
Chris Penn
Rhohit Bhargava

The devil's in the details
One other thing to remember about crafting resumes that are ready to be presented in social media is that seemingly insignificant things, such as the font or type of bullet used in the document, can make a huge difference in how it displays. CareerPerfect offers several tips for creating a clean, social media ready resume. Here are a couple of the best ones, in my opinion.

• Remove all graphics because they can confuse some technologies/systems. This includes art, shading, bullets, and (to be safe) horizontal and vertical lines. Asterisks, tildes, and hyphens can be used since these are universal symbols.
• Be sure your name is on the first line of the resume and no other text is on that line.
• Because many systems utilize a proprietary format or technology, it is best to remove other extraneous formatting, e.g., tabs and tables, as these may become distorted in the transition.
• Use common and easily recognizable fonts. Ideally use a universally recognized sans-serif font (without the little "feet" on characters) such as Arial or Helvetica.
• Use hyphens (rather than parentheses) around telephone area codes: 555-456-3945.

The questions to you

• Have you updated your resume to be presented or shared in social media?
• What is your biggest question about revising your resume for social media?

~Liz Massey, Managing Editor, ASU Alumni Association