BIOBLOGS: 21ST CENTURY RESUMES

I’ve had the pleasure of communicating with Pasha over the past couple of weeks and I have been impressed with her spirit of “git up and go” and her enthusiasm for exploring come-what-may. However, she is young and I have take the opportunity to warn her not to take her 15 seconds of fame [thank you Andy Warhol for that term] for granted because once one arrives at the point where media and others initiate the action, the clockhands immediately begin to sweep and the seconds tick away, and soon she will be running on empty with regard to others taking notice of her [they've already moved from the billboard]. What this means is that every person seeking a job is essentially competing to get 2 seconds of attention from a stranger, just as a billboard is on the side of the road. This is precisely why traditional resumes don’t work: When was the last time you stopped to look at a resume–words on a screen or ink on paper–with any real interest?

A billboard is big so it doesn’t need a lot of graphics to grab you. I have been lured numerous times to look up at one simply to see the word or the typeface. Big matters. Scale that down to a screen or a letter-sized sheet of paper and the words are about as enticing as a stain of spilled coffee. My point to Pasha and others who somehow manage to game the system to get it to glance up at them and their wants/needs/predicament/call-for-help is not squirrel that 15 seconds away, but to convert it as quickly and meaningfully as possible into something more long lasting. We’re all going to end up seeking the same 2 seconds, but some of us can get a better jump on it than others through creative hard work and innovative spirit. You can’t stop there.

Traditionally, a hand-signed (in blue ink) follow up letter after an interview would often separate those with true class and those who didn’t care enough to bother; often it was the follow up that clinched the 2nd interview and got one the chance to really sell him or her self as the best candidate. Follow up is even more critical today.

The score in the game today is determined how well you pitch yourself [heard of the elevator pitch?] and how well you deliver at the home plate: you don’t have to hit a home run, but you have to at least hit the ball. That means you have 3 chances to get 2 seconds. Don’t miss even one.

HIREPASHADOTCOM

THE BIGGEST BIOBLOG EVER! BILLBOARD SIZE!

WHAT DOES IT SAY ABOUT HER?

SHE WANTS TO STAND OUT.

THAT TAKES SOMETHING DIFFERENT.

NOT EVERYONE CAN DO A BILLBOARD.

HOW ABOUT YOU?

BIOBLOG AS MINI-BILLBOARD?

It’s gone in case you didn’t notice, the status quo. Obama flipped it over his back like he would a long shot. It doesn’t matter whether it is good or bad or right or wrong when it comes to people with the most talent trying to survive and making themselves stand out amongst the restive classes (middle, upper lower, low and lowest) who find themselves standing in a line at the STATE office with their hand out and a number: 0022110044999383 … next!

If you think a traditional, wordy, same old resume is going to do you any good right now, you deserve a job as a shovel shover or a trash, sorry, waste specialist. You don’t know jack if you think resumes (invented after the second world war, that’s WWII! when jeeps were for the Army, and Eisenhower jackets were cool) are still meaningful when they say things like “objective” and “work experience.” The categories today are “I am, I can, I will.” If you don’t get it, you lose.

Bioblogs are not for everyone. If you are everyone, get off this blog.

Adieu.

MARCH 2009 NEWS RELEASE

WORD-DRIVEN RESUMES FLOOD MARKET, READERS DROWN

BIOBLOGS TO THE RESCUE!

As the already too busy marketplace for workers and talent is flooded by the surging newly unemployed, a new problem arises: the majority of these folks have NEVER used a resume before and are being SNOOKERED by the greedy word crafters of traditional resumes (and those expensive “cover letters”) without so much as a clue as to what a waste of hard earned money it is to throw another piece of paper full of hackneyed key words and stilted verb-phrases into the all consuming fire of THE RESUME FILE. Does anyone really believe that their word-based resume can possibly grab 2 seconds of attention in a stack of hundreds and thousands and millions? Wishful thinking.

NEVER has their been a better time to employ a strong, attention grabbing, high value graphic resume. That is what a bioblog is for, to get 2 seconds of attention.

BAIT IS BAIT, SOME IS BETTER, BIOBLOGS ARE THE BEST.

FINANCIAL CRISIS / GOVERNMENT BAMBOOZLERS / DOUBLE-TALKING POLITICOS

CREDIT CRUNCH / UPSIDE DOWN / DEAD END IN THE TUNNEL

LAYOFFS/FAILURES/LOSS

IT’S OVER, IT’S GONE, IT’S COMING

NEXT WEEK, TOMORROW . . . WHAT?

You want keywords, there ya got it. Why do you think they don’t have windows that open on Wall Street skyscrapers? Sales down, projections flat, staff let go. [Don't you love that, "let go," as if you are pleading with them, "Please, please, let me go, ruin my plans, fracture my hopes and disrupt my life! Oh please!"]

Anyone who thinks that your typical word-word-word resume with its usual “works well with people” and “highly motivated” has a chance in Hell of having an impact on a screener in today’s market — much less the worse one of tomorrow — is living on mescaline or Disney movies.

Now is the time for all young men (and women) to call for the aid of a bioblog.

If ever (EVER!) there was a time to stand out above and separate from the crowd, it surely is now. If anyone is going to get hired, it is surely going to be the best ones; the others will just have to make do.

Which one are you?

A Cutline Bioblog – Using WordPress To Grab Attention Fast

Here’s a bioblog that incorporates WordPress’s popular Cutline theme. It not only is attractive and inviting, but can be used both digitally (with activated links) or as an attachment (pdf or jpeg); it can even be printed and mailed, accompanied by a cover letter personally signed in blue ink. [Remember: it's just bait!] This blog-like bioblog shows how well the art form works to combine the creative character (of your bio) with the contemporary appeal of a blog.

Compare this bioblog to a traditional resume: What a difference graphic design makes! Why should advertising 20+ years of global experience and hard-earned expertise not be as powerful as a typical ad for a mass-produced luxury car or a shiny chronograph? Why shouldn’t self promotion (of talent, know how and potential value) be couched in graphic terms just as “exotic travel” or “fine cuisine” be promoted, which do not offer anything more than a limited experience of fading value over time?

I am among the more than a few who have noticed the “tribal nature” of the workplace, and my particular spin on it is that not only to “employers hire personality more than skills,” but that it is a process that is based on tribal instincts inasmuch as they (the hiring chieftans) can get away with. Thus, a resume is more of an initial “same belong” signal (of likeness, therefore safeness) to the other fella / woman holding a weapon (the fistful of dollars and promise of esteem on the one hand, the determination to help the other win on the other hand).

What a resume in the format of a bioblog should say is, I’m like you, Same Belong.

Then you can chat about how the differences are worth a dollar or two more.

Bioblogs make sense simply for no other reason than good packaging, an art that has been lost in tradtional resumes. When I first got into the resume designing and writing and editing and printing business back in the 70s, it was still a form of “packaging,” mostly for VIPs and certainly management-level types. The choice of the typewriter was important (there were all IBM Executive typewriters with proportional spacing), and the paper was as well (parchment being the “bond-like” favorite). Cover letters, hand-signed in blue ink, were the outer layer of the packaging, introducing the “product” (the resume); a proper strategy called for matching envelopes and letterhead. The point was to impress first of all the decision maker’s secretary so she would take the package seriously enough to forward it to her boss (rather than the trash can where the sloppy stuff went), and then to be sufficiently packaged—sophisticated, convincing, attractive, important—that the boss would want to know more. To achieve this you had to spend, to package with proof of your sincerity, implying your willingness to invest in reaching out to them and that a mutual reaching back to you would be a sensible financial transaction. It was, is, and will always be about money; thus, packaging. Whether you are selling perfume or your potential, you want to upscale your brand to make it look and smell like money, the opposite end of the spectrum from the job-obits known as chronological and functional resumes.

Packaging, with graphics, is the way to set yourself above the generic brands.

What kind of person are you, character-wise? Do you know? What kind of job do you want? What kind of job will you settle for? How well do your character traits line up with that job or that company’s culture? Do you know who you are and who you are becoming well enough to foresee how good a fit you will be with the company? What are you going to do to get their initial 2 seconds of attention? What is the bait you plan to use to make them notice you in their stack of stuff? What magic words in the English language are you going to employ to make your character more appealing, to stand out as a face in the crowd? What particular action verbs and keywords are in your personal arsenal to slay the beast of blandness? How can you write a job description or experience history or workplace chronology that pretends to tell even half the real story, the one that you know is (or was) played out in the dynamics of character interactions, with other workers at many levels? If you learn that a company is seeking a “resourceful coordinator” how do you demonstrate that you possess and exhibit those traits naturally–even though you’ve never had a chance to demonstrate, prove or document them in one of your (good or lousy) jobs due to the nature of the managers or organizational structure? How do you lead a stranger to interpolate your present and past experience into an accurate picture of who you will be a year from now? How do you bait the hook to get them to consider investing in you and your/their mutual future?

It was about one year ago that BIOBLOGS: RESUMES FOR THE 21ST CENTURY was published, introducing a new art form to the world of resume writing/reading. During these 12 months I have crawled and scrolled my way through thousands of websites and blogs relating to employment, recruiting, writing, creativity, business, human resources, careers, college graduates, graphics, communication arts and the business of blogging. Like a suspect run through a series of waterboarding, I feel like I have been wordboarded: O.k., I give up, I confess, I started the resume revolution! I splashed the first big wave in years by calling into question the very authority of “action verbs” and “keywords”. And I admit that I intended from the git-go to bring the castles of the resume writers down, to shake the very foundations of those hallowed halls of the Professional Resume Writers’ Association and all the certified professional experts on “personal branding” and even those women who claim to have the “courage to reduce a resume to 1-page.” I confess! I did it! I doubted their power and value, and wondered more than once whether mere words and a semantic mix of job descriptions cum braggable achievements would really cut the mustard! Why? Because I dared to imagine that the “real story,” the core of the whole shebang, lay in the missing parts, the ones that were mostly connected by the glue of the resume owner’s character at work; this I thought important–the role of the person’s character traits within the game played by the workplace dynamics and the tribal nature of the organization–not so much the job duties and tools provided, but the jobber’s perceptions, actions, and resources.

But I must have been wrong. Despite having succeeded in sparking a kindling fire for the topic of “bioblogs” (which simply did not exist in 2006 before my book), and latching onto ownership of the term “bioblogs” (trademarked; mine), I overlooked something beyond the total dedication to the traditional status quo of those who are busy selling it: The lack of initiative in the American worker and his/her fear of wandering off the beaten path. Most are happy to fill out the form and be 1:40,000,000 resumes in Monster.com’s database; that’s how different they think they are; that’s how confident they are about their creative character. Follow, follow, follow; don’t dare stand out.

It looks like in the USA just about everyone active in the job market is happy to stay on the same track as everyone else, and that view is supported broadly by those who make a $ on it, charging excessive fees for standard crap that wasn’t even exciting resume-wise 30 years ago when resumes still had an affect on people reading them. While the experts talk about “personal branding” from one side of their mouths, they babble about building keyword strength from the other, as if you can be short and tall at the same time, or a leader and a follower simultaneously. Unless you are a politician, don’t buy it.

That the use of graphics in a resume is such a cold fish to these folks amuses me, and I believe it is mainly because they don’t know how to do it so they don’t like it. Personally, anyone who can’t write their own word-driven resume today probably needs to go back to school because it aint that complicated to satisfy the scanners and the HR folks, especially if all you are aiming for is a narrative of your job obits.

But if you thought long and hard about your future (with work as a part but not all of it) and tried to capture your value in words, you would find they could use a little push and punch, and that’s where graphics come in. Advertisers figured this out about a million years ago. Why is it taking everyone else so long? Stop listening to the clowns who want to sell you the same thing they sold the last 500 people and demand something different for yourself. You should deserve it, and if you don’t think you do, go pay somebody big $$ to crank out a sheet to feed the machines. After all, it’s important to get your life summed up in bits and bytes in the database, isn’t it? Isn’t that what it’s all about?

A Colorcode Bioblog – Designed For Colorful Appeal & Interest

This simple bioblog uses one single image in the background upon which summarized data can be projected, combining the intent of a traditional resume with the graphics appeal of a blog; thus, a bioblog that translates limited but noteworthy experience into a statement of qualifications. Properly targeted, this should spark an interview.

A Cutline Bioblog – Using WordPress To Grab Attention Fast

Here’s a bioblog that incorporates WordPress’s popular Cutline theme. It not only is attractive and inviting, but can be used both digitally (with activated links) or as an attachment (pdf or jpeg); it can even be printed and mailed, accompanied by a cover letter personally signed in blue ink. [Remember: it's just bait!] This blog-like bioblog shows how well the art form works to combine the creative character (of your bio) with the contemporary appeal of a blog.

Compare this bioblog to a traditional resume: What a difference graphic design makes! Why should advertising 20+ years of global experience and hard-earned expertise not be as powerful as a typical ad for a mass-produced luxury car or a shiny chronograph? Why shouldn’t self promotion (of talent, know how and potential value) be couched in graphic terms just as “exotic travel” or “fine cuisine” be promoted, which do not offer anything more than a limited experience of fading value over time?

Sometimes there’s no good reason to do anything but list the essentials, the bare facts of (1) what I do, (2) where I did it, and (3) why that alone should get your attention. The structural intricacy and solid foundation of the imagery is appropriate to the kind of work he is an expert in, and serves well as a subtle expression of where he is most comfortable and familiar. In other words, a bioblog’s driving graphic image should be easily connected to the character and/or work advertised, which is the first decision to make in choosing a motif for your bioblog.

I like this bioblog because I get a sense of this person and how he thinks. There is a lot of personal philosophy and some personal branding as well going on in this monologue that is aimed at some stranger “out there.” Competence and expertise are obviously not an issue; it’s all about character . . . and we all should know our selves so well when setting out to market and sell them to the highest (or best) bidder. This I would consider a fairly “traditional” bioblog because the vast amount of information provided is the bulk of it, and the black/white images simply draw one’s attention into the “character behind the work.” Both text and images combine to make a strong impression, an inviting one, which should lead (from the baiting phase) to a personal call (to the face-to-face phase).

Here’s a bioblog with a sense of humor and action, simultaneously delivering a message about “what kind of guy I am” and about the typical ‘putting out fires while up to your neck in alligators’ of a workday. This bioblog proves that bioblogs can be both striking and fun. You think a recruiter or screener won’t take 10 seconds to notice this? I can’t imagine it. This is Best Bait! This bioblog represents another form (the Headliner form) that starts off with a statement (“Some Workdays …”) and combines that with an image to establish a mood easily tapped into by a weary resume screener. There are countless ways to tweak the headline to a specific workplace milieu, industry, company or even an individual character at work (the person the bioblog’s targeted at). It is a very effective and flexible form.

Branding, to those promoting their brandmeister wares, can make pixie dust out of a pig’s ear; it can transform a wheelbarrow of manure into a jasmine-scented luxury ride, a leather thong into a fur bikini. Branding adds value, they say, to the hidden essence waiting to be released, encapsulating and highlighting the veritable “uniqueness” of the goods and products, separating them from their crass, generic, archetypal forms. Not a smoke, but a Marlboro; not a purse, but a Vitton; not a burger, but a Big Mac.  But how true is this? Are not the known brands of the world the result rather than the process of “claiming” a branded image? It’s easy to “brand” something that only the rich can afford because the currency of the difference is simple enough; and the food experience is not complicated to brand.

But what about this business of “branding yourself,” and how are you supposed to do this since you are limited to just one version of you? Aren’t each and every one of us on this planet essentially a unique brand (of humankind)? I’m like Mark Hovin (JobBait.com) in that when a branded and an unbranded CFO or marketing manager of whatever are compared side-by-side, where is the difference? Is one wearing a silly hat? Is the other one wearing no pants? What do they have to distinguish themselves from one another than (1) physical appearance, (2) psychological make-up, (3) character at work (public persona) and (4) experience in the real world (results, know how, common sense, drive).

One man says “my kids play soccer” and the other says “I raise dairy goats.” Which one is branded?

One woman says “I feel hurt when we miss our goals” and the other says “my work is never done.” Which one is branded?

I’ll be honest: the only place I see where a job seeking person can incorporate any of this branding business into their personal path is by creating a distinctive and provacative bioblog–relying on a powerful image for the subliminal message–and embellishing their “work experience + education” with a good sense of their creative character.

This is the 3rd example of the Pro Forma bioblog form in which the objective is to drive the main point across without delay and without superfluous distractions. It calls for the reader to accept the bioblog more as an invitation (RSVP) than a typical resume (those dreary “job obituaries” as the headhunters call them). A little artwork and interesting typography combine to make a powerful statement with a quiet and steady voice.

This is example #2 of the Pro Forma bioblog version in which almost standard resume formatted material is jazzed up with enough graphics to help sail it through the stack to the top. Remember, words are a dime a thousand and there are 70 million resumes full of similar words (English has only so many to offer writers about working), so that is why we must rely on the help of graphical interface just like other advertisers. This example shows just how little it takes of some visual help to make the whole resume work better; the background image doesn’t distract, but rather contributes an ambiance of seriousness to an already no-frills bioblog.

Another “traditional form” of bioblogging is the Industrial form in which a scene from the industry occupies the background, with the foreground dedicated to the person’s workplace particulars. Needless to say, any industry has endless visual possibilities to work with–see commercial advertising in the Wall Street Journal or business magazines to view how they do it constantly–and is a good place to start from if you have 15-20+ years in one industry. People with years of changing times are, for better or worse, practically inseparable from their industry’s successes and failures, so the general background is a good place to start from.

The Portrait form is a bioblog that is almost a mirror or painted image, although it may be a sketch of your creative character more than a Photoshopped jpeg. Because people are so easily attracted to the at least looking momentarily at a face, we can grab their attention to move them to our information, shown here in an easily comprehensible format that goes beyond the parameters of typical resume phrases and keywords. Her sense of self (at work) and her wrap-up of her expertise/experience is succinct and trimmed like a newly bud rose.

Sometimes all the work looks the same over a lengthy period of time, yet in a personal discussion one would learn how the challenges were considerably different. Rather than write it all out in tedious passages that one cannot be certain will even be read, it might work better to “connect the dots” with the focus on the main point: the player in those situations who dealt with the issues and opportunities. In other words, paint a portrait of the character, not the furniture of the workplace in the background. This bioblog is the beginning of a form (the Question Posed): from a simple question designed to momentarily engage the reader’s interest, it goes on to imply that from your education and experience in the world and at work that you have an answer; not especially “the answer” but one that the reader would enjoy discussing in a personal interview, that hallowed place where the closing is made, or not.

Below is an example #1 of a bioblog form (Pro Forma) that is used to get the basic facts across without resorting to the usual resume tactics of piled on paragraphs and action verbs + keywords + the latest trendy buzz phrases. By employing skillful images and graphic manipulation, the message–rather than being lost in the job descriptions–is brought to the surface as a clear-cut selling point.

Sometimes it makes sense, from an advertiser’s perspective, to shock before the statement; of course, in a bioblog, the shock should be harmless and relevant, so in this sample the “global” and “international” nature of the bioblog has a bit of the message subliminally slipped into it. This person is no local yokel and has sufficient work experience to be able to talk about it in the broadest terms.

This bioblog could be either a man’s or a woman’s because the image is neutral. The tagline is MARKET and a very traditional “summary of qualifications/experience” occupies the main space. This bioblog shows how easily an encompassing image can carry the load to stop the reader in their tracks, and wonder more about what this is all about.

A good example below of how a subdued and simple image can dress up a rather bland background. Imagine this typical resume material in the usual chronological or functional format: it would be unappealing and without any zest, just a list of places and times and things done. In fact, it would be a litany of the past and nothing more, but by building the information around “selling to the buyer” the candidate has expressed an ability to work harder and “think out of the box” (as well as about the box itself!).