I’d be especially curious to hear from people that work in human resources.
Anyway I saw a story about this today and it made me curious:
The Wall Street Journal reported on this, but it seems to me to be a made up trend. My guess is that an editor heard about a company that was producing video resumes and told a reporter to write a story, regardless of whether or not there was any real trend.
Most human resources people I’ve talked to barely glance at most of the resumes they get. They just want a quick overview of your experience and qualifications to determine whether you meet the basic requirements for a job. I can’t imagine them wanting to take the time to pop a DVD in their computers and navigate whatever you may have on there. I could see doing them in a job where you had to work on camera or demonstrate some sort of production or multimedia skills, but for most everything else they seem a waste of time
So has anyone here ever done a video resume? Have any of you managers or human resources people ever received one?
We are small enough that we really don’t have an HR department. Resumes just come in to the managers. No I cannot see anyone on my team wanting to pop a video resume in the DVD, unless we were really bored. Truthfully I don’t know how it would help.
One of the guys has a bulletin board full of pictures that people sent in with resumes. If he has some free time, he scans one and superimposes the face onto bizzare pictures.
With that being said, 95% of the group got in because you knew someone. So unsolicited resumes don’t go very far.
If I were looking at resumes today, I sure wouldn’t watch one. Five minutes to hear what you have to say, rather than thirty seconds of scanning work experience, education, and contacts? No way. Much rather have an e-mailed one. And on a DVD? Who has that kind of time? If you’re gonna do it, do it on Youtube and provide a link, so no one has to waste any time. Still, unless this is something that I need to watch a video of you doing (acting resumes are the only possible example I can think of), this is a waste of time.
What purpose would a video serve other than to show how good someone looks? There’s no interaction, they’re just making a statement that could just as easily be written.
Bizarre picture probably wasn’t a great description. But he can put your face on pornographic photos or something. One photo of some guy with a big grin on his face is now on the body of a horse getting “impregnated” by another horse.
There is. I am aware of people sending in audition tapes to auditions that they cannot attend personally, though it’s acknowledged that this is inferior to actual live audition.
Most companies of any size are now requesting resumes in Word or text format, so that they can automatically check for key words or phrases that match the qualifications they’re looking for. If you send a paper resume, they can scan it and do the same thing, but no way are they going to waste time watching somebody’s DVD. It would go straight to the circular file.
I would say it’s also a waste of time, unless the job is specifically gered for something that would use a video.
Here’s sort of an example, in addition to my written resume, I have an online resume, which is a website, I did up all fancy.
I would say form my logs, about 5% of the people I send a resume to actually visit the site.
What even more affirms this is often during an interview, the person will say something like, “Now where did I put your resume?” And I’ll say something like “Here’s a copy of it, but I also have it online if you’d like to review it there, it may be easier for you to see, since you’re at the computer.”
Almost all of them take the written resume. However the few who do log onto the site, are all very impressed, they are like “Wow this is so, cool, I wish everyone would do this. It would be much easier.”
So people seem to like the idea of web based resumes and quirky gimmicks but in the end, they only want the old fashioned printed resume
Are any of these folks from other countries? I understand that in parts of Europe it’s standard to submit a photo with your CV (for what purpose I have no idea).
I am sure it’s possible but unlikely. Our firm doesn’t do international work and requires a pretty intensive knowledge of US real estate markets. While that doesn’t preclude a foreign worker, I would think that such a person would have been in the country long enough to know that this generally isn’t done in the US.
All that said, I don’t recall anyone with an obvious foreign background submitting a resume. More often it’s relatively young and decent looking people. So maybe the poster who speculated that the purpose would be to show how good looking you are is correct. I sure as hell wouldn’t submit a picture. I want to get an interview before I unleash my ugly mug on an employer.