Its all about you. Your resume is your brand in terms of how you are perceived by others. You have to treat it as such going forward. Your brand may include your online reputation as well. The fact of the matter is, resumes are a dime a dozen in the real world. Recruiters and HR personnel are inundated with so many they can’t stand it. Thats why the popular statistic of ‘6 seconds’ is such an important role.
Imagine this for a minute. Your creative resume from MarketableResume.com lands on their desk. They conduct a search online to gauge how active you are in the community, how involved you are with local organizations, and what shows up? Nothing. There is no Twitter account. There is no Facebook page. There is no website mentioning you at all. Its 2014. Its time you took the plunge and started branding yourself online to land that perfect job.
Did you think we’d just create your resume and throw you to the wolves? Thats one of the major reasons we have this blog up and running in the first place. Its YOUR guide to making yourself the brand you want to be. The brand you need to be in order to grab that 100k+ position at your next interview.
Keep it Professional
Twitter. If you’ve already signed up for Twitter and your tweeting your little head off, lets hope you’re being smart about how you post and what you post. For those that don’t, this section is for you on how to get started.
There are several sections you need to think about when you sign up to get that ‘brand’ noticed and in positive light.
Lets take the above account as an example.
1. Username: This is a snippet of how your account will show up when someone searches for your name. Your username shows up twice. So think about a username thats not too much ‘in your face’ or ‘mean’ or whatever. Its visible. You need to think about it. For this example, Stephanie is @20sTravel. Thats very acceptable. As you can see, she likes to travel and blog about her excursions.
2. Your Name: Yes, your actual name will appear. Or you can add a fake name if you’re trying to tweet anonymously and hide your tracks. If you’re real name is being search, first and last, chances are high you’re twitter account will show up on Page 1 of the search results.
3. Description: Again from the example above, you can see the description will show up in the search results as well. Be conscious of what you add in that section when creating your account.
As you see where I’m going with this, social media sites show up high in the search results for searches of a persons name. You should understand like the back of your hand, how privacy setting would be effected by search results. The last thing you want to do is have someone tag your picture of that time when you were totally sh*t faced at the bar in college 10 years ago. Not professional and the resume, and your brand, will hit the trash can super quick.
Its a recurring theme. Protecting your brand for a job is just like protecting your privacy and reputation online.
