Being that I run a recruiting agency, in the Technology space, I always find it funny to read and hear people talk about how ‘resumes are dead’.  It seems that if you talk to anyone who thinks they know and understand the IT industry, this is especially true.  CIO Magazine recently had an article: IT Hiring: Your Text Resume Is Soooo Last Century, which laminates on which type of resume is now the ‘in’ thing.  From the article:

“It’s no coincidence that LinkedIn recently began encouraging its users to amp up their profiles with videos, illustrations, photography and presentations. And Toronto startup Vizualize.me has attracted 200,000 users to its tool, still in beta, that turns text-based resumes into online infographics.

“People are open to new formats, new ways of presenting credentials,” says John Reed, senior executive director of Robert Half Technology, an IT staffing firm based in Menlo Park, Calif. “People are trying to figure out how to stand out in the crowd, how to bring life to their profile and experience, and they’re using social media tools to do that.”

Reed says that neither he nor his colleagues have seen a lot of applicants submitting videos yet. When they do, they function more like cover letters than resumes. “The videos are ‘let me introduce myself before you look at my resume,'” Reed explains. “The companies look at it and say, ‘That’s cool, that’s an interesting twist, that makes the candidate stand out.'”

So, are resumes dead?  I don’t think so.  Here’s what happens, as an industry heads toward ‘zero’ unemployment like the IT industry is heading, hiring managers, recruiters, HR, etc. become more open to anyway they can find talent.  This means you’ll run into many ‘candidates’ who are not really actively looking — those all powerful Passive Candidates — and don’t have a traditional resume.  Many of these folks will be open to talk to you, but really don’t want to take the time to put a resume together.  In a traditional recruitment process, 90% of Recruiters would walk away from these candidates – “Well, if you won’t put a resume together, then you must not want to really work here!”  This is why so many people hate recruiters and HR!  Because we say stupid stuff like that.

The best recruiters and HR Pros will find a way to get these candidates in the door without a ‘traditional’ resume.  As the article in CIO points out – video is one way to do this.  I’m a huge video fan, not necessarily as a resume replacement, but as a compliment to your resume.  Where HR, Recruiting, and/or a hiring manager might skip over your resume because of some illogical preconceived notion of what they think they want, many will see a short 90 second video introduction of a candidate and say “let’s get this person in for a face-to-face!”  That’s very powerful.  Whereas a passive candidate might not be willing to take an hour or two piecing together a traditional resume, most are willing to join a Google Hangout for a couple of minutes to introduce themselves and give some highlights.

It’s like a commercial in very modern day sense, and does what your resume might not be able to.  It’s not perfect.  Just like a resume, a short video might attract you to a candidate you ultimately find out is not a good fit for your position.  The video resume commercial does, though, give you one more short piece to the puzzle, and honestly still so few people are doing it, it will help set the candidate apart, and your HR/Recruiting shop apart from the competition.