I now officially believe that paper resumes are dead. It has been almost two years since I have received a paper resume in the mail. I have even noticed that candidates stopped providing their resume for job interviews. Even when I meet candidates at networking events or mixers, they refer me to their LinkedIn profile to view their credentials. And forget paper — my last two employers never even asked for my resume. Any why should they? My career profile is on at least 20 different social networking sites.
Social networking sites such as LinkedIn have worked marvelously in our industry. With over 120 million profiles on LinkedIn, you can find almost anyone on that site. From a job seeker standpoint, you can easily convert your LinkedIn profile into your resume. Now, you can even apply for a position by using your LinkedIn profile.
LinkedIn also introduced InMaps earlier in the year, a visual representation of your professional connections. This was great idea to visually explore your connections. One major flaw — your network can actually be too large:
Bummer! Looks like I will not be able to chart my connections, but what if I could visualize my professional history? Maybe create a graphic with complex information and is skillfully displayed…that would be cool.
Vizualize It
The use of technology and the Internet has been our time-saving ally in filling positions. Millions of resumes still saturate job boards, yet recently there has been an influx of resumes appearing on the Web.
It wasn’t long before the creative minds at Vizualize.me united the idea of taking your LinkedIn profile and turning it into an online resume. However, Vizualize.me goes beyond the generic resume by generating a visually stunning infographic.
By harvesting your career information from your LinkedIn profile, Vizualize.me creates an eccentric graphic visual representation of your experience, education, skills, interests, and recommendations. Vizualize.me collects features from your LinkedIn page and measures it by the level of experience you’ve achieved and the tenure in which you have been utilizing those skills. An infographic is produced and your professional history is precisely and neatly displayed. Your infographic is also customizable with options to change your profile, theme, color, font, and even upload a personalized background.
In fact, Eugene Woo, the CEO and Co-Founder of Viziualize.me states the purpose of this site is “for people to create an easy to understand, beautiful and compelling visual resume.”
Woo adds, “I’ve always been a fan of infographics and data visualization. We live in a world of data overload. There were a few resume infographics that went viral by guys like Chris Spurlock and Michael Anderson. I saw the potential of automating and making it accessible to all.”
The Future of Resumes
Not only is Vizualize.me a unique way to display your skills, it is also great for sourcing. I stumbled on the site a few weeks ago after a candidate introduced me to it. Instead of sending me his resume or asking me to view his LinkedIn profile, he asked me to peek into his visual infographic, an approach Woo mentioned he hopes individual users utilize. I had to x-ray the site further to see how many profiles have been generated to this beta site.
Another great function of this site is that it removes the “degrees of connections” barrier that can hinder how we contact candidates and view profiles through LinkedIn. Regardless if you are connected to someone on LinkedIn, you will be able to view a full infographic of their experience. At the bottom of each template also contains links to their social media page as well as any other link they have listed on LinkedIn.
Posting a resume or infographic on the web allows for greater visibility than just posting on a job board. Many sites such as VisualCV, ResumeBucket, and Emurse help with building online resume and post to the web for free. Those sites are also great for sourcing:
Similar sites About.me and Flavors.me allow for combining of social networks to create one hosting page that is visible to anyone on the web. Likewise, Kareer.me produces a professional site personalized for each potential employer. This site allows users to record a personal video, attach samples of their work, and customization of resume details. Brazen Careerist, a site targeted towards young professionals and college students, launched a Facebook app that also converts LinkedIn profiles into a less flashy infographic.
With a candidate’s resume or infographic online, hiring managers, recruiters, and HR professionals have an easy link to view professional summaries and qualifications. Sourcers can also use search engines to easily access these online profiles.
Right now, Vizualize.me does not contain a search feature, but this custom search engine I created might help: Vizualize.me Search Engine
With over 700 profiles and growing, and a waiting list of thousands, Woo says that the site will be open as soon as two weeks to the public. Woo says, “…the text resume is a dying format. It’s static, boring and quickly becoming irrelevant to professionals whose accomplishments and identities are dynamic, social and online. Vizualizeme is the future of resumes.”
Vizualize.me provides a much needed break to the black and white dominated world of resumes by adding a visual mirage of color and flavor to your career portfolio. Why not give your boring resume a facelift? I did!
Want to take it for a test drive? The invite code is vizme.