Marketing Yourself In A Connected World – Is It Time To Kill The Traditional Resume?

I’m surprised by how many people still don’t see the direct correlation between developing your Personal Brand and Digital Marketing. Companies are leveraging every facet of Digital Marketing, but the true power that is driving the success of Social Media and Web 2.0 is how individuals, people like you and I, can have equal voice in the marketplace with very few barriers to entry.

Even money is no longer an issue. Individuals have created huge Personal Brands and communities with nothing more than time served. Take the many stars of MySpace – individuals with over two million "friends" who have become Marketing and PR juggernauts for their respective audiences, or the person who started a Blog six months ago and is now regarded as the "go to" person for their niche.

These are live case studies in Marketing that we all have to be paying more attention to.

I got to thinking about the power of Marketing Yourself effectively in this all-connected world after reading the post: Die, Resume! Die! Die! Die! on the Bryper Blog this morning. Bryan Person was marketing himself and putting his ideas out there long before he took a job at Monster.com. His Podcast, New Comm Road, acts like a classroom on the topic of Social Media, and that’s why his Blog posting affected me.

I spend a good chunk of time thinking about education and how the whole system is still functioning within the structures created by the Industrial Complex. Resumes are still stuck in that time period. I have read about examples where people have thought outside of the box and done some wacky things to get the attention of HR, but Bryan’s reasoning seems more in line with where we are… and where we need to be:

"If you’re an online advertiser, digital marketer, or social media-focused PR pro, then you know that the one – or two-page resume that you’re supposed to send to the hiring manager or HR coordinator does very little justice to your work. To wit:

– It doesn’t reflect the thought leadership of your blog or podcast.

– It doesn’t list the online responses to the award-winning YouTube video you produced for a client or the comments you received to a post-mortem blog entry about your ground-breaking integrated social media campaign.

– It doesn’t tell your potential employer where and how you’re commenting online.

– It doesn’t show the depth and breadth of your professional network or online presence."

The idea of a Social Media Resume‘s time has come. Think about how this process could work: a prospective employee fills out a form that validates whether or not they are qualified for a position. They then have one paragraph to give their pitch, and then add their links. We live in a world of walking the walk, and people need to know that most HR professionals’ first destination is a Search Engine (or Facebook) to see what it says about that potential hire.

Why not stack the odds in your favour and have a space that unifies who you are, what you’re about and how you think? I know this process won’t work for every type of hire or every type of industry, but in the Marketing, Communications, Advertising and Public Relations spheres, it seems like a no-brainer.

The two best parts about a Social Media Resume is that it will evolve over tine (as the individual does) and will develop as you do. Plus, it’s much healthier for the Environment – less paper, less filing… and less fuss.