Let’s face it – static resumes were never convenient.  Hours of tailoring your one page resume for dozens of positions may yield only one interview… if you’re lucky.  And that doesn’t necessarily mean a job offer!

Enter the “Social Media” resume.  In an era all about online reputation and your “personal brand,” the Social Media resume offers a dynamic way to represent yourself as a three-dimensional person.  In other words, we’re driving the business of ourselves.

We often need more than a page of text to explain how we can best be “an asset to your reputable company.”  What we need is:

1. a live, easy-to-update, and shareable version of our resume.
2. widgets, such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, etc., that allow others to see our web footprint.
3. direct links to articles of our successes, our design portfolio, or hard metrics on Google Analytics, Technorati, and more.
4. a place to add our blog, Twitter or other information that show our passion and intellect.

Done right, the Social Media resume showcases our skills and experience as well as how our personalities would mesh in a team, how well we’re connected in our network, etc.  Sounds great, right?  But unless you’re already “internet famous,” how does it really impact you?

My dad always told me, “When a door is open to you, you have to be ready to walk through it.”  The Bad Pitch Blog echoes that advice: who you know and what you have to offer are both important factors in whether or not a reporter/analyst/prominent blogger will reach out to you for an article or post.  Taken out of the reporter/pitcher scenario, it still holds true.  So what if you have 2,000 friends on Facebook?  What do you have to add to the conversation?  Here’s where I think the Social Media resume helps.  It’s an online repository for your knowledge and success fodder.  When you meet someone crucial in your network, you will be heard.

And now it’s the opportune time to start cataloging your successes.