My roommate is a paralegal downtown and his contract is up in a few months so he’s been actively searching for a new gig in the Boston area. This led me to ask him about his resume and if he wanted me to take a look at it before he sent it out to new potential employers. He ran it through Tufts Career Services a few months ago and they helped him clean it up a bit but he sent it over to me anyway to take a look. As a co-op student and then again as a graduate student, I’ve gone through a bunch of different workshops about how to create a solid resume. I’ve had my resume tweaked and retweaked dozens of times and I’m really happy with how it has turned out. I decided that my random act of kindness would be to help my roommate do the same.
There are the obvious fixes which are to make sure the various indents of text are aligned vertically, that your job duties are explained succinctly and start with a good action verb in the past tense, and it takes up a maximum of one page. However, the non-obvious fix for most people is to somehow connect what’s on your resume with your online professional network, namely Linkedin.com.
Linkedin.com has become the largest professional network in the world with over 135 million users from 200 countries and represents over 2 million companies. Studies have been done which have found that 60% of companies use some type of social media for hiring. So if most professionals are on Linkedin and most job recruiters are using social media, then there has to be a way to link your static (read: old-school) resume to your online professional network. I’ve done this for my own resume and also for a few friends including my roommate.
The method I’m currently using is to put a QR code (quick response) on my resume that’s linked to my Linkedin.com profile page. If you don’t know what a QR Code is, check it out on Wikipedia.
A QR Code is a 2-D barcode that can be embedded with information such as a website hyperlink. You can generate them for free online and scan them with your smartphone with a free app.
The use QR codes has been exploding recently in the marketing world as a way to drive shoppers to their websites through a mobile phone. Whether or not my roommate takes my suggestions or not is not the point. It never hurts to have an extra set of eyes on your resume. Lastly, if you’re reading this post and looking to hire a 6’4″ paralegal with dashing good looks who also happens to be an outdoor badass, please send me an email and I’ll link you up with him.