I’m going to a job interview this afternoon, and the interviewer said to bring a copy of my resume. Since my printer broke, I put it on a CDR with the intention of bringing it to my neighbor’s house to print out. Then a thought occured to me: Wouldn’t it be totally rad to hand the interviewer the CDR instead of a piece of paper? It’s for a programming /sysadmin position, after all.
Or would that be totally lame and indicitive of my laziness?
Bring both. You’ll feel (and look) silly if there’s any incompatability issues.
That’s a good point. It’s in PDF format, though, which is pretty universal these days. Right now I’m leaning towards handing the dude my CDR, and then whipping out the paper version as a backup if he can’t figure it out.
I’d take it on paper, and have the CDR as a backup. My experience has been that initial interviews are handled by HR, perhaps with a handoff to the department you’re interviewing for, and it would be far more convenient to hand the paper one over, with a comment that you also have it on the CDR if they would like to keep that.
IMO you’ll get a few sideways looks if you hand them a CDR and say “My CV is on that”. They won’t think you’re clever or ‘rad’. just weird and slightly unorganised.
Maybe they’ll dig it if I bust out some more gnarly 1980’s slang.
Tubular.
Seems like overkill for a document of what, a few K? Plus a hard copy is going to be easier for them to make copies of, hand around, stack with others, etc. If they want to look at the doc, they have to go to a computer, open the CD tray, possibly take out what’s in there and find a place for it . . . Kind of a pain in the butt. I don’t think you want to stand out in this particular way.
At best I would bring it as an extra version – but be sure to bring paper too.
Is it appropriate? Do you have pictures, audio, video or other interactive files as part of your resume? Then it would be a plus. If it’s a standard .pdf file from a resume template, then you may look lazy. Take it to your local copy center, they can print it.
Speaking as a man who’s done his fair share of hiring I would find is alarmingly annoying.
The last thing I want to do is drop a CD in and have to open a file to go over a resume.
I too would find it tremendously annoying.
When I was hiring, I’d jot down a lot of notes on a paper resume after the initial phonecall to the job applicant. I’d also jot down notes on the back during/after the initial interview. Then I’d pass that resume with my notes on it to my next colleague who would be assisting in interviews (photocopying it if necessary).
If you are going in for an interview, they’ll likely want a hard copy right there in front of them.
Picture it:
You show up at my office, walk with me to the boardroom where we conduct interviews. I’m all set to get down to the nitty gritty details of your work history and experience, and you hand me a CD.
I can do squat with it in the boardroom where there is no computer.
I sigh, go back to my office, load up Acrobat so I can open it, page set up, print, walk down the hall to get your resume off the printer, and then come back to the boardroom, where you’ve been sitting twiddling your thumbs all this time.
If I need a softcopy, I would specifically request one. Handing someone only a CD-R is just one small step up from handing him a piece of paper with URL to your webpage scrawled on it.
Er, apologies if that sounded snarky… no such tone was intended.
CD-Rs can be great, especially if they include graphics or a digital copy of a portfolio. But always bring a hardcopy of you resume/portfolio if you’re going to be there in person.
Tangible is good.
Well I gave the dude the hard copy, as suggested, and he seemed pleased. The interview went really well, and I get to come back in a few days to meet the Big Boss.