There’s no way around it…you need a resume to get a job. And it’s not just enough to list your job experience onto a Word document, plop your education information at the end, and email it to recruiters. For one thing recruiters are looking in all sorts of interesting places for the next great employees for their companies. Also, potential employees are impressing recruiters with their social resumes.


Digital social resumes are a modern take on traditional resumes. While you definitely need to include your work experience and education on your social resume, you can expand the information you provide to prospective employers to include samples of work, pertinent links and more.

When you create your social resume, you are, in essence, creating an online presence as a person who makes a valuable contribution to the workplace and who is worth seeking out for positions recruiters are looking to fill. Even if you aren’t actively looking for a new job, it’s smart to create a presence on career networking sites such as LinkedIn.

Recruiters are known to scour these sites looking for workers who meet specific job criteria. And while Facebook has been known to have a hand in more than one person losing their job due to inappropriate postings or over-use at work, now you may be able to use Facebook to get a job--Facebook launched a job board in late 2012.

Nothing can take the place of that basic PDF  resume, but that should be only one tool in your job-hunting arsenal. Learn more about social resumes in our infographic below, then check out our list of 10 tips for optimizing your social resume.

Sources:

2012 Social Job Seeker Survey, Jobvite, 2012
How Recruiters Use Social Networks to Make Hiring Decisions Now, Time.com, July 2012
The Facebook Job Borad is Here: Recruiting Will Never Look the Same, Forbes, November 2012

Credit to OnlineColleges for the infographic -  Find an online college for you! with OnlineColleges