Resumes are for *Shit*. The 4 Things You Really Need: LinkedIn, Blog, Keywords, Social Media.

Robert just penned a pretty good post on how to tune up your resume for the "economic slowdown".  He gets it mostly right (write?) -- do your best to stand out, write a regular blog -- however, i think he's a bit long-winded on his recommendations and overlooks some fundamentals (which he actually does practice, but doesn't mention so much).

So as i commented on Guy Kawasaki's blog almost 2 years ago, i'll summarize again why Resumes are for Shit, and why all you need are 4 basic things to get a kick-ass job (or whatever u want really -- still have to write that post later on why money-sex-power-drugs-guns are pretty much commutable):

1) get a LinkedIn profile, and pimp it out -- HARD. 

a simple LinkedIn profile is nice, but it's not what i'm talking about.  you better work, sister (sashay, chante!) -- get your connections into LinkedIn, fill out a work history with different positions you've held & expertise gained, get recommendations from people & partners who you worked with (not just your boss), answer questions on topics that matter in your line of work, etc.  most importantly, reference companies, products, skills, and other keywords that are important to you & others (see below).

note that other social networking profiles don't substitute for LinkedIn.  there was a time when i thought Facebook might eventually subsume LinkedIn, but i was clearly wr... wr... WRONG (ok there, i said it).  both LinkedIn & Facebook -- and for that matter, MySpace as well -- have broadly established & well-entrenched userbase that likely prefer one of those 3 primary SNS platforms.  but still most people who call themselves "professionals" should maintain a LinkedIn profile, even if it's not their primary hangout.  LinkedIn is *THE* place that most recruiting (or any) professionals use for people search, and LinkedIn search results generally rank at the top for many Google name searches.  note: if you have a common name like John Smith, even more reason to create popular content attached to your name to distinguish you from other John Smith's who rank for basketball, accounting, or other types of specialized content.

fyi, Guy was initially a bit of a Luddite re: my suggestion to use LinkedIn + Blog as alternatives to a traditional resume, however he came around later and penned one of the single most useful posts about LinkedIn i've ever read (tip: an old friend may have helped change his mind on that one).  if you haven't checked it out, i strongly encourage you to do so.  Guy doesn't really need LinkedIn, but his suggestions are top notch.

2) write a regular blog, and 3) ABSOLUTELY DOMINATE selected keywords (the ones that matter to you or others). 

surprisingly, this doesn't take as much work as you'd think. 

if you write regularly, passionately, & intelligently about topics people care about (ie: search for), use appropriate keywords in headlines & titles, you'll start to rank for that content rather quickly.  in fact, i've accidentally blogged about topics / keywords i don't really care about, but ended up ranking for anyway.

let me explain.

NEWSFLASH: there are a lot of people out there who blog.  a few of these crazy people blog regularly.  a few of those few know how to use keywords in headlines, and how link text & basic SEO fundamentals work.  a very small further few write well and are fun & interesting to read.  however, there are very very VERY few people who blog regularly, interestingly, & specifically with respect to the keywords they care about.  if you are one of these people, you can rather easily become king of your (perhaps small but focused) hill, by using regular & interesting blog posts that score well and rank for search keywords of note.  it also helps if you include or embed photos or other media (see #4).

you can of course use other search-friendly sites & services as distribution for your content & keywords, but blogs (& blog headlines) are pretty well optimized for search so it's probably the easiest place to start... tho twitter & friendfeed & a few other notable services work well to amplify & distribute original signal from your blog or other social platforms.  i'll describe some of these below.

4) create notable online social media (video, pictures, presentations, etc) relevant to your line of work and link [to] them / embed them on your blog, your LinkedIn profile, and other online sites.

this one is actually overlooked by a number of very thoughtful (but not very colorful) bloggers.  i once wrote a post about Facebook licensing their platform to Bebo in response to Google launching OpenSocial.  the copy was pretty much empty blather except for the somewhat insane graphic at right that i created using powerpoint, and then uploaded to Flickr (and also to SlideShare), then embedded in the post.  i probably spent about 5 minutes writing the post, but i killed most of an afternoon (3-4 hours) putting together one silly image to satisfy my own freakish psychotic social network addiction.  the photo later got picked up by several other bloggers, and when i checked just now the Flickr photo had over  6000 views.  the SlideShare presentation (just one slide) has about 5600 views.  and the photo comes up on the first page of google image search results for the term "social graph".  whaddya know: my crazy-ass graphic is DOMINATING the social graph term!  and i bet my post gets more awareness than any ten other high-and-mighty bloggers who wrote some in-depth intellectual analysis (yeah i know i do that shit too).

the simple thing is --

we are visual creatures. 

we dream in color. 

people love images, and they watch a lot more TV than they read.  you've heard "a picture says a thousand words"?  well as far as blogs are concerned, it's damn well true.  i'd even go so far as to say there is such a thing as keyword visual arbitrage -- essentially, that there are high-volume search terms with low-volume associated images or video, that you can draft off and use to discover & attract new audience. this may seem like link-baiting, but actually it's just satisfying market demand for visual imagery around key terms that people have expressed an interest in.

in fact, i'm often criticized by several folks who say that my trademark "ransom note kidnapper" font style choices -- bold, underlined, enlarged, or many-colored fonts -- clearly let people know i am both childish and insane.  and some folks may be right that it is incredibly annoying and odd, but it is a visual brand choice i've made (whether consciously or not ;)  whatever your perspective, i've developed my own special (olympics?) audience.  the choice of using "AARRR!" as an acronym for my "Startup Metrics for Pirates" is pretty much the auditory complement to the visual point above.

if you don't care to be quite as lunatic as i, you can simply use embed code and links to bring your popular social media from other sites & services into your blog or social profiles.  i'm particularly fond of Flickr (graphics), YouTube (video), and SlideShare (powerpoint), as these services are also destination sites in themselves, and drive their own unique traffic to content you distribute on those sites. many people who do embed rich content also overlook this fact -- that the same content redistributed on multiple platforms can draw incremental users & attention, and that some of these platforms may be better at driving relevant traffic than your own blog or text-based sites/services. 

in short, the rich media you associate with your blog and certain keywords also DEFINE WHO YOU ARE and WHAT YOU MAKE / USE / ENJOY.  if you can cleverly associate social media -- literally, media to share with other people -- with your persona, and with specific tags & keywords, then you can merge these things into one. 

in summary: you become a notable social object by associating rich media & keyword text with the person you are on blogs and social network profiles.

in closing, i include below examples of the graphic, video, and powerpoint content associated with "Startup Metrics" that i typically embed on my blog & social profiles:

Startup Metrics for Pirates: AARRR! (Startonomics SF 2008)

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: dealmaker media revenue)

Comments

[Jon]

My experience of LinkedIn despite pimping it up and getting recommendations is that it did nothing but attract spam, recruiters trying to reach other people in my organisation and time wasters. Not to mention nosy staff.

I agree with having an interactive Resume. I keep mine on Google docs and embed hotlinks to my blog and other websites but personally after 3 years on LinkedIn I ditched it and my career has been none the worse for it.

[www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=712406420]

I totally agree. I had my blog but then I got totally sidetracked and I am trying to get to writing content regularly. One of my goals for 2010. I have been actively pursuing the rest and also attending networking events/tweetups and what not. Anywhere where I can meet people and volunteering at conferences seems to have been paying me off dividends.

[Isao]

Nice entry - being in the transition period I am encouraged by your recommendations: blog, LinkedIn, and so on. Your opinions are bold and to the point, but the colorful texts were a bit too hard on my eyes. (It also made this blog semi-NSFW since coworkers kept staring into my screen which says out loud about job-hopping ;).

[Zuco]

Totally agree. Anyway we cannot forget the traditional resume, because many companies still demand it.
It also depends on the country. My experience in Japan is that the resume is something that will be used in the interview and then everybody will forget about it.
I also realized in Japan that social media here is something related for private use (and almost always anonymously) than for public use.

So all these platforms will help, in fact they are helping me a lot, but just to put me in contact with a certain part of the world.

For example in south Europe, based on my experience, the only important thing to success is about "personal contacts" The more people you know the more opportunities you have.

Every country is a new world to discover :)

Interesting post, and good advices by the way :)

[Sagem]

Paper CV or by email may be rubbish, but most companies aren't so upto date to use new media.

[Brian Burt]

Thanks Dave. I really appreciate hearing about the fears that *other* entrepreneurs have faced. I have been feeling a contraction from my belly up through my chest lately, and it ain't what I would choose. Being in Oakland rather than the Valley, and having so far avoided VCs and most networking events, I don't know that many other folks who have been through this. So this has me feel more at one with the world.

[rodel]

this is exactly what i told my community on seo/sem's impact to your online reputation and client conversion.

[Carl Pierce]

I would say that the one thing you're overlooking is making sure your PersonRatings profile is loaded with good info because anyone can rate and review anyone else. Dave, you have nothing to worry about because you've been rated a '10' on everything: http://www.personratings.com/name/Dave/McClure/141

[Josh Neumann]

Very informative post, I agree, blogs will definitely help you stand out from the competition. Unfortunately, most people will be too lazy to follow the advice, but those who do won't have trouble finding a job.

[Ted Murphy]

I liked this post so much that I went out and added a couple of groups to my linkedin profile.

I do think you might talk a bit about the importance of being pro-active on the internet if you are job hunting. I've seen stats that indicate over half of job positions are filled by large companies through their own website and HR outreach.

I do wish you would add my new product to the monetization techniques you outline in your slide -- add paid personal interaction to ads, lead generation, subscriptions and ecommerce.

[Ryan Graves]

Absolutely awesome post. Really sums up a variety of tools that those of use who are in the process of building reputation online can use. Thanks man.

BTW-You starting following me on Twitter a while back after my Sweetcron post. http://ryanagraves.com/08/28/2008/sweetcron-the-automated-lifestream/

Think we could chat for 15-20 mins sometime? graves.ryan[at]gmail
http://ryanagraves.com

Cheers.

[tom]

Dave, I assume this advice regarding Linkedin is for the under employed. Anyone in an in demand field/skill set will be inundated by recruiter calls very quickly. As I read once, "a profile on Linkedin is the equivalent of writing your name on the bathroom stall" Linkedin is great for careers, like marketing, biz dev and sales. For engineers, it makes sense to use a pseudonym unless you are laid off.

Other than that, your advice regarding creating notable visual online media, rocks. I plan on putting it to good use in the near future.

[Kevin Merritt]

Great post Dave. I'd also suggest that people link their Linked In profile to their blog and blog with authenticity without worrying as much about me finding your blog directly through Google. Employers looking for candidates will find you and dozens of others through Linked In's advanced search feature. But from there, it's your blog that will set you apart from the rest. What percentage of Linked In profiles link through to a blog? My guess is < 5% so right away you're in the top 5% if you have a blog and link to it.

[Oren Michels]

Wow, Dave - you do all of these things...does that mean you're job hunting? I think we could find a slot here; by all means visit Mashery's jobs site and check it out :)

[Mike Driehorst]

I'll echo a bit what Shannon mentioned, that you almost need a hybrid -- a resume with links and references to the online you.

LinkedIn and the other great means and tactics you mentioned, Dave, are things we need to do -- so we can be found. But, not every worthwhile employer uses them. The tried and true resume is still the primary vehicle I'd say many, if not most employers use to weed out candidates.

This is definitely a post, though to keep for reference.
Take care,
Mike

[Kevin Cimring]

Absolutely true. We are busy recruiting at Jemstep, and when trying to evaluate prospective candidates in the early stage, I definitely get more out of LinkedIn (and other online sources)than I do from a resume. Great post.

[Shannon Paul]

Blogs and social networking profiles really mean so much more than the old resume or anything I can fit on a sheet of paper.

However, since most potential employers still want to see a resume, I added hyperlinks to everything, including my blog, social networking profiles and former employers, and then embedded it into the body of the e-mail. This may be a good step for some in the move away from the static resume as we move through this transition period. The learning curve for most is still pretty steep when it comes to online communication.

Great post, thanks for all the great advice and information! There's plenty here that I still need to work on.