Beth Colley, CPRW, CFJST, Chesapeake Résumé Writing Service

Job Seekers, certified professional résumé writers, and hiring managers will soon be facing a new challenge in the employment market – What to do with new and upcoming trend of video résumés.  It’s true, video résumés are not flooding the job market scene yet, but what will happen in the next five years? And how will job seekers, hiring managers, and professional résumé writers handle these challenges? 

Career Builder announced at the Career Master’s Institute Convention in Louisville, KY April 25-28, 2007, that they will be implementing a way for job seekers to upload video résumés into their résumé portfolio by the year’s end. While attending a recent Anne Arundel Society of Human Resource Management meeting, I asked a group of hiring managers and an employment law attorney, what they would do if they received a video résumé.

One HR professional noted that she would immediately open it and view it, for curiosity if nothing more.  She likes job candidates who have original ideas and who are “cutting edge”.  Another professional noted she would never open a video résumé because of the potential for law suites citing EEOC violations and discriminatory practices.  A third hiring manager said that she would most likely pick up the phone to call the candidate without viewing the video and ask that he submit a traditional paper résumé.  Someone else noted that the use of video résumés could be used as an opportunity to gain further insight to a candidate’s capabilities after they were in serious hiring negotiations and they felt that it would be ok, once they had seen all potential candidates through an in-person interview.

The “unofficial” legal advice that came from the table was for hiring managers to have a standard policy on video résumés just as they would for any hiring practice.  If video résumés are going to be used as an evaluation measure, then they need to be required of all candidates in addition to a traditional résumé. 

So there you have it.  I think it’s safe to say that video résumés can be of some value to a candidate, but only as an addendum to the traditional résumé.  Over the next few years, job seekers will probably need to consider a multi-media portfolio which consists of a paper formatted résumé, an e-résumé, a PowerPoint demonstration, and a video résumé. 

I see both pro’s and con’s with this kind of strategy.  For one, serious job seekers who have some money to invest in their job search could afford to pay people like professional résumé writers and multi-media specialists to provide the guidance, resources, and expertise to give them the professional edge that they need to succeed.  But for the amateur who thinks he can just put together a two minute video résumé using a web cam could prove disastrous especially IF hiring managers begin using video résumés as a standard hiring practice.  It could be like diving into a 3 foot pool of water head first.