Let me preface this by saying I’m not sure when or if I’ll ever use this, but I wanted to share it with you, because it wouldn’t surprise me if this is the resume of the future.
You should all be aware by now that future employers are evaluating your social networking presence as a part of the application process. A recent CareerBuilder study found 2 in 5 companies use social networking sites to screen applicants. Hopefully this isn’t news to you.
Now there’s a tool that allows you to use your social networking presence to create an infographic of your resume: Vizify. If pulls information from LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and Instagram to create an 11-page infographic about you and your career experience. (As a side note, you authorize access to each account separately, so you could choose which social media sites to include.)
You can edit the resulting infographic to add or remove information, allowing it to be customized to fit your needs.
I tried out Vizify today to see if it was something I wanted to share with you all. Here’s my end result, which took me less than half an hour to complete and edit. The biggest change I made was my photo. Vizify pulled in my current Facebook profile photo, which features my fiance and me on New Year’s Eve. While not a photo I mind having out for public consumption (because you should never have a photo on Facebook you don’t want the whole world to see), I preferred a more professional photo of me solo.
I would likely tweak mine some more if I was sending it to a future employer, but you get the point. I’m not sure I’m ready to embrace using this to replace a traditional resume, but I like the idea. I’m a very visual person, so I’d like getting this from applicants.
It was also interesting to see which words I mention most often on Twitter (which is one of the pages created by Vizify), and what tweets receive the most responses. I’m definitely going to look more closely at this data. Even if you never show your creation to anyone, it might be interesting to see what your social media presence is saying about you.
What do you all think? Will this be how applicants send their resumes to employers in the future? Would you consider sending this with an application now?
What do you think?