I'm currently teaching Freshmen students to build an eporfolio and encouraging them to consider updating and using it as a key part of their life-long professional growth. Articles like this just strengthen my message and support my efforts. For some great info on eporfolios you can access Dr. Helen Barrett's web site at: http://electronicportfolios.org/. She has tested nearly every program avaialble to build eporfolios. While it is geared toward education, it is still a very valuable resource. I believe that eporfolios are one of the best tools avaialble for both job seeker and employers to really make a great match - employee and company.

Offering the personal jump page as a portfolio of sorts is a good idea -- one that I have used in the past. It seemed like the site I developed for this purpose got some pretty good traffic from prospective employers. However, existing employers may either simply not appreciate the existence of such a site or wrongly interpret it as proof of self-employment.

If you think paper resumes are dead, part of your brain is also. What's dying is the ability to write effective resumes (in any medium) and read them comprehensively. A new hire was just fired because his experience did not match the job description. If the hiring manager had understood the resume, he would have noted the mismatch and avoided the lose-lose result.

Get professional help in writing a resume. It will pay huge dividends. Writing your own resume is like a straight man picking out his own clothes...not a good idea.

For a recent interview, I prepared a packet including not just the resume, but work samples from documentation to code and flow charts. I had also prepared a PowerPoint presentation to present myself and my skill set in the format I was most comfortable discussing. A copy, of course, was in the packet I had prepared.

I got great feedback and although I didn't have the hard experience in the position they were hiring for, they are considering me for another mutually acceptable slot.

You need both a resume and an online collection of relevant information about yourself, your experience, etc. The resume must focus on a limited set of data, and shows your communication skills as it pertains to balancing brevity with relevant content. Your online repositories can expound upon experiences and such.

A resume also shows that you can put forth a more conservative, professional image which is called for in most business situations. Certainly it is dated, but it is part of "the game", and having a traditional resume says that you understand the rules of that game and can abide by them when necessary. Add a suit to the in-person interview, and hide the multiple piercings, and the doors to most companies will be open to speaking with you. Just do not put photographs on your resume as many companies automatically reject such resumes.

Be forewarned, though. There is no 4th Amendment online. Anything posted there about you can be used against you, whether you know it or not. This pertains to current and prospective employers alike.

Prepared "work samples from documentation to code and flow charts"

A problem to do if you are working on software that is considered "confidential" or a "trade secret" as is all of the software I've ever worked on.

The resume, including the 1 page resume, is certainly not dead or dying any time soon. A resume may not do the perfect job of telling your career story but then I do not have the time to hear the life story of all 50 applicants for the job, google them, read all their blogs or surf their personal web sites.

Depending on what you do, a well written resume, complemented by work samples, can do wonders. Once I have a very short candidate list, the material that complements the resume will certainly come in handy. And I may even look up their web site and google them.

Re. seeking professional help to write a resume, no amount of professional help can prevent people from lying on their resumes and getting fired if their actual experience etc. does not match their sales pitch. I have seen badly written professional resumes (like some bad commercials) and I have seen some excellent ones written by the candidates themselves.

Common sense in these matters still reigns supreme, web 2.0 or not.

I agree in concept that there could be a lot of utility in this sort of thing, but in this age of identity theft, I try to avoid adding to the growing wealth of personally identifiable information about me on the web. Perhaps there is nothing there that couldn't be found elsewhere, but it can't help to tie it up into one convenient package. Perhaps that is just me though.

While I agree that this is an effective way to present myself and my skills, if I were to maintain such a portfolio (resume by any other name), my current employer would terminate me. They already do so if one is found posted to such sites as Monster.com. I recommend treading very cautiously and trying to ascertain your current employer's policy regarding maintaining an active, public resume. A paper resume is safer when in doubt. Alternately, one could create an electronic portfolio, maintained only on your desktop at home, which could be sent to prospective employers on a cd with a note explaining why the information is not published for the world to see.

By the way, just what *do* you have on your Facebook or MySpace page? Would you send your current boss to read/see it? I am aware that my boss checks out my photo blog, eyeDance, pretty regularly, and it tells her a LOT about me, and that I am quite different outside of work. She knows me and knows my work habits. Would a prospective employer be so tolerant?

When I start the process for a new hire (IT field), I will typically receive over 150 applicants. I do not have time to look at anything more than one or two pages of text for any person. During this process, I make three piles: "no", "maybe" and "yes". After a phone screening process by HR, the in-person interview is scheduled. During this time, if someone were to hand me additional background information (paper or a site link), chances are low that I'll actually go to the website.

These are the hard facts: your initial paper presentation is paramount, and your communication skills are also important.

If I have two identical candidates, one with an impressive on-line suite of talent (website, blogs, etc) and the other with better personality and communication skills, I'll take the person who can communicate every time.

Dead? Are you kidding? What is dead is the concept that you actually have to apply for a job and apply yourself after you get one. The entitlement mentality has to end. Just because an applicant hands me a poorly written piece of paper does not mean I should hand them a $75K job, a corner office, car, laptop, iPhone, and four weeks of vacation. There is a difference between "work life" and "social life", and graduates living in MySpace waiting for someone to hand them a job need to "get a life".

The resume gets you the interview, the interview gets you the job. Social networking may work for some as part of the interview process, but it is not a replacement.

Here's a place for building and sharing your personal brand. What's a personal brand you ask? Well picture a resume that exudes personality, culture, and allows you to provide a more complete picture of who you are.

http://gettoknow.net

The good old fashion resume is by no means dead. I use them to primarily identify the list of key candidates for 1st round selections while HR is doing their verifications. The resume tells me a bit about an individual's writing style, originality, ability to compose, summarize, and condense, their grammar and spelling achievements, etc. in a manner that conveys much info. I then use the resume to make brief notes and reminders on them for the in-person interview. I also save and use them to identify candidates for other potential positions and I can pass them to other managers with my notes on them. You want a job with my company - you'd better have a resume, and then be prepared to also meet with the President or CEO. I could go on and on ....

>> ..went the way of the caveman nearly a decade ago..
Perhaps much of the technology sector has not caught up yet, or maybe I'm just dealing with the wrong places. Every place I talk with wants a paper resume, and of the many I've sent out, few have even looked at my online resume. But, maybe that's due to my own ignorance and/or lack of skill in preparing my paper.

Lots of good comments and ideas from posters here. And my initial thoughts as I read the article were echoed by some of the comments, such as "..What is dead is the concept that you actually have to apply for a job and apply yourself after you get one..", and "..What's dying is the ability to write effective resumes.." (and I may even be among those referenced, as far as "writing an effective resume" is concerned).

I am in fact currently looking for work, and find little interest, despite having what I believe to be a strong and diverse background, a good record of accomplishment, and a strong work ethic.
Perhaps some of you folks would be kind enough to critique my online resume, to help me improve it...
http://about.stevethornburg.com/

Thanks in advance!

I believe a well written one page resume (2 at most)is still a good idea as you do not know who will be reading it and if they are new school or old school. I do believe in the importance to make it a PDF file as some firewalls and policies block files with macros. Professional "help" is advisable, or have a buddy that is a successful manager for many years read over it. I have seen many resumes that look very bad and the person never gets to interview. I believe a resume is there to get the interview as that is the necessary 1 on 1 time to sell yourself.
I have seen some good Powerpoint presentations, but be careful and keep them conservative as the experts say you have about a 25% chance of meeting someone with your same personality base. I totally agree with some of the earlier postings, I will always take the person that can communicate better no matter what the job.

I think one point that is being missed here is the resume is not about you, regardless the medium. As a marketing tool, its purpose is to entice the audience to give you a second look in response to their need - it's about THEM. And they are a dynamic variable.

Thus there really is no "single" resume format, medium or approach to grabbing attention and convincing the decision makers (or buyers) that you are what they are looking for. In fact in the IT field it's not uncommon to have both a technical and a business focused document based on what a particular hiring manager may be looking for. It's still not uncommon to have a word and an ascii text format plus a few "hard copies" to bring to the interview. Another format that has potential is the Resume DTD for XML applications.

As a recruiter I'm still attracted to job boards because of the tendency within the selection process to depend on certain key words matching to job specifications. Perhaps Web 2.0 and google-like search engines will put aside the need for centralized repositories. But as was pointed out in a previous reply, part of the problem is untrained gatekeepers. Anyone can point to the word C#, but can they deduce a background in .Net if it's not explicitly quoted?

It's perhaps a wise assumption that what worked for the last search may be less effective today. And it doesn't hurt to try new methods to set oneself apart, while keeping a ream of 24 lb. ivory on the side.

This is all very interesting. Seems like many of the responses are from people doing the hiring. MY experience is far different. One job my wife looked at was posted for TWO days, and got 350 applications, in a rural area. Word is that companies now use a text scanning program, to hunt for those resumes that contain certain key words. No human will read that carefully drafted page or two. No key words, no interview. You could have a Nobel prize in that discipline, but because that word is not "key", then they do not even READ your resume. One IT job I applied for was posted twice, several months apart. I had been doing the exact same skills for 15 years. No interview. No phone calls please, they said. Other than walking in the front door, I don't know what to do. And of course, if you did not finish your university degree, you must be stupid. All those years of experience, broad background and work ethic, are for nothing. Oh, one thing. Do NOT move to a rural area unless you are independently wealthy, or you have a written guarantee that your job will survive. You may end up on welfare.

The paper resume is not and will not be dead anytime soon. As for the use of a website, social/networking sites and on-line resumes, where do you guys have the time for this stuff unless you are currently unemployed. I am an IT Manager and am busy from the moment I get into my car in the morning planning my day to the time I get home at night. An then there is the after hours work and support problems to contend with.

More importantly though, is the issue of security. It is absolutely impossible to be 100% impenetratable when it comes to being secure. New viruses, malware, phishing scams, etcetera are developed daily. Please realize that it would take days at a minimum for a virus for example to be detected and a fix to be engineered, tested, and released for public use. Think of what damage is being done in the meantime. In addition, as another reader suggested, why make it easier for criminals to get the information they need to compromise your identity. Then you have to invest all of your time and effort to undo the damage (all of which may not get fixed).

We live in a world where people are getting lazy and relying on a technology which grew too fast for it to be properly secured. Now the vendors are constantly in a race to be first to market, leaving the endusers exposed. Why put yourself at risk?

I agree with Deb when she points out the world and technology is moving towards social networking as a recruitment tool. I also agree with the sentiment most of the readers that the resume isn't dead.

IT NEEDS TO EVOLVE. if you consider the resume is the currency of the recruitment industry then you also have to conclude that so many forms of currency cannot be efficient. The resume needs to evolve into a tool that can be traded and read and compared and used more than once every 3 years.

Take a look at zapoint.com. We have taken a fresh look at the resume as a career management tool embracing social networking and visual analytical tools. Zapoint members have a resume for the next millennium.

Hmmm.... "the resume is dead". Interesting statement. Wrong too.

Like "Disco" and "New Wave", the "WEB 2.0" concepts sound good but never seem to last long in the real world.

Text readers that scan for specific words miss out of so many excellent potential employees, it is just amazing. Where I work (Victoria, BC), ~80% of employment activity is referral based. Vancouver, 48KM away, is ~20%. Different places, different requirements, different companies, etc.

The one-page format may be nice for the young at heart & experience, but someone with 10+ years in IT needs a couple of pages just to list the recent jobs / contracts & skill sets acquired / in-use.

Those "soft job" (currently) unemployed types can probably get away with living in MySpace and doing the social softie thing. In -my- world, communications and the resume will be around for a long time to come. And yes, I'lll hire a Co-op student over a B.Sc. any day, ditto a "mature" individual over someone who can not talk or write effectively. The techie skills are just 50% of the hire requirements these days.

I am a small corporation, doing contract work in IT. www.ipfconsulting.com to give you an example.

I suggest you don't talk to an HR type filling a position. Go talk to an IT Manager trying to hire someone. There is a world of difference.