Resume startups are booming as technologically deficient candidates rely on them to provide the razzle-dazzle they believe necessary to attract employers’ interest. But workers and employers should tread lightly. Multimedia resumes “revive with a hea…

The blurb above hasn’t mentioned RezBuzz’s video production. RezBuzz provides professionally produced video resumes online as part of the yearly subscription, so that applicants have video resumes, paper resumes, and access to an online networking community. For more information, visit RezBuzz.com.

From a recruiting standpoint, anything using visual media representing the candidate is verboten under North American privacy and employment laws.

I have a free blog full of info on resumes, job seeking, interviewing, etc. etc.
http://kristen.fife.conquent.com/blog

It’s amazing how many “experts” and “solutions” have surfaced during challenging times…A recruiter is not a resume writer – nor is a resume writer a recruiter. In fact, there are local recruiters-turned-resume writers with our work posted as samples on their website – You can be sure they’ll be notified.

At the same time, while I like and teach VisualCV – This technology will not generate your content as it should be to make you compelling, relevant and competitive. This is why you utilize a trained professional

Thanks,

Jeremy Worthington
http://www.buckeyeresumes.com

Regarding your comments about OFCCP and compliance, you might want to review the Webinar we did with the EEOC about this exact topic. http://www.interviewstudio.com/DisplayWebinars.do

So, let’s discuss this. The OFCCP enforces the E.O. 11246 that prohibits employment discrimination by government contractors. It is not about video… or photos, but about human behavior when considering any data about a job applicant.

Technology, when used to its fullest extent (i.e. not just for entertainment or cool display purposes) can, in fact, aid employers with compliance instead of hindering it. Consider that technology today can prohibit viewers from clicking on certain areas of content UNTIL another area of content has been reviewed and ranked.

Technology will never be “taken away” but it may be tweaked to be utilized in the best way for compliance purposes.

Will the OFCCP and DOL forbid the use of this technology and these mashups that provide more due diligence to employers? I seriously doubt it. However, they may create rules for technology vendors for creating very tight systems which lead the viewers of these online profiles (HR and Recruiters and Hiring Managers) through a series of checks and balances. Code can track who views what, when, where, etc as an audit trail, but even further, the same set of code can force a viewer to rate candidates only within narrow compliance guidelines according to job description language and specific skillsets, and words used to answer questions, for instance — no matter what the viewer is looking at, be it a resume or a video or an assessment test report.

The issue may become one of technology “covering the butts of employers” rather than helping the protected class of candidates to get reviewed without prejudice.

Employers are already being audited by the OFCCP and DOL on the definition of an applicant.

I do think technology can be taken away, and the goverment, in its infinite wisdom, is doing just that.

The OFCCP burdens of resume database searches has been a huge burden on both employers and job boards. Because the burdens are so high, many job boards just said, we don’t comply, while some employers completely stopped “sourcing” resume databases.

So, can the technology be taken away? It already has happened.

The question about social media and public resumes will be an interesting one because from what I hear the DOL is hiring lots of auditors. LinkedIn, Google, and other “public resume / profiles sites” don’t provide search logging and auditing, which is required by the OFCCP.

It’s not a question of if, but Who and When the DOL suits the first company.

There is a better way to find talent, and that is what we are creating over at GrouperEye.com. The main concept behind our platform from a student’s perspective is, “Instead of letting my resume speak for me, let me show you, directly, what value I can personally create for your company.” Have a look http://www.groupereye.com/launchprogram/.

We must remember that NEW means CHANGE equals FEAR, and then the market calms down when ROI is experienced. So this down economy will actually, IMHO, be instrumental in bringing these info-rich profiles into play for many companies looking to save time and money in their hiring processes. These tools give much more interviewing data upfront so they cut out weeks in the traditional process (initial phone calls, culture matching cross-department interviews, first-interview rounds, and even skills testing or personality assessments).

After all, you can’t give the market something (free public information about job seekers on Linkedin, Facebook etc) and then take it away… This never works. Of course there will be new rules and slight tweaks in the viewable amount/format of data about people (e.g. facebooks recent policy changes)but this “full disclosure” world of online data is here to stay.

And we won’t see litigation about these until the systems become more sophisticated in their dashboards — providing who/what/when/where information about viewing behavior.

InterviewStudio.com is one tool that certainly minimizes the lawsuit potential in that it displays no still photo images and gives equal ranking to resumes, endorsements, social media data and the video portions. See some examples here: http://www.interviewstudio.com/DisplayArchive.do

Or view Thaddeus Gunn’s personal showcase here: http://www.interviewstudio.com/show/Thaddeus/Gunn/18

We have a lot to say about this subject on our blog: http://www.interviewstudioblog.com

While these ‘resume-building’, ‘cv creation’ services are useful to some degree, the problem can be that these in fact create a generic CV pool as more and more people avail of the services. This excludes the fact they can often over-charge jobseekers in the process.

If a candidate wants to stand out in the crowd they need to show what they can do succinctly and with evidentiary data. They also, in most cases, want the chance to ‘present’ themselves to employers at the earliest opportunity i.e. the classic ‘if only I could get to the interview stage I could REALLY show them that I am the best choice.’

In this regard we have been witnessing the growth of new technology, not least in terms of our video CV product, TalkingCV – and had satisfied candidates as a result.

Similarly, recruiters are happy to use the tool as a first-round video interview, saving them time and money, and also opening up a larger pool of candidates worldwide – see http://bit.ly/pyBcr for a case study supporting this.

In essence, in this saturated market candidates see the need to market themselves – services like those detailed in the article and our solution, TalkingCV, will be used more and more as the number of positions available continues to dwindle.

The reality is the entire web recruitment system is a complete mess.
* Job boards are sending as many candidates to the employers as they can… That’s what they are paid to do, regardless of experience and qualifications.
* ATS systems are totally broken; great candidates are getting told they aren’t qualified, recruiters can’t use them, and all they do is keep recruiters away from ALL candidates.

Most of the “resume profile” systems above are nothing different than a slimmed down version of LinkedIn, with no connectivity, no search ranking in google or other search engines, therefore the marketing is left up the to the job seekers. At least LinkedIn profiles are highly ranked in the search engines, its free, and there are 500,000 HR and recruiting professionals using the platform.

We all know that Connections trump Credentials. Mark and Gerry at CareerXRoads pointed out that 32% of employers were hiring at least 1 in 4 candidates through referrals.

In in those referral interviews, the resume isn’t the primary driver, the conversation usually is about the job, and the reference.

Job boards are doing what the market demands of them, helping candidates market themselves.

The problem really seems to be teaching job seekers how to build a referral network, so they have a 25% chance of getting hired, vs a 1 in 300 chance, if applying through the corporate career site or job board.

Resume based approaches are still a HOPE filled model. The candidate HOPES she/he used the magic words targeted by searching methods. The recruiter HOPES to find the data to differentiate among candidates in a meaningful and valuable manner.

Organizations that are adding robust filtering to their own careers sites with objective data gathering and engaging experiences produce highly concentrated candidate pools. Leveraging the in-house career site to produce pure candidate pools is where the real value is for both the candidate and the recruiter.

Joseph P. Murphy
Shaker Consulting Group
Developers of the Virtual Job Tryout®

You have a captive group of job seekers, many unsure of new technology and most having never conducted a true job search. I would imaging some of these solutions look like a silver bullet.

In reality, most provide a boiler-plate looking resume, rehashed career advice, some brief training on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter and posting a resume up on the internet for a year.

These are the dating sites of the late 90′s. One or two will actually provide a valuable service and survive and the rest will go silently into the night.

Brad Attig
Managing Partner
http://www.MyRetailCareer.net

http://florida.jobing.com/blog_post.asp?post=20314

Cindy Kraft, the CFO-Coach