Brazen Careerist Launches Social Resumes

Following Brazen Careerist’s focus on promoting its members’ ideas, rather than their resumes, the site has rolled out a social resume tool. It creates an active resume that showcases ideas and can be updated just as quickly as you can write a new blog post. Users can highlight a variety of different content, from posts or projects outside of the Brazen Careerist site, to conversations on the site.

The idea is that for Gen-Y job seekers (or really anyone else that may not have a traditional, linear resume), these ideas will prove valuable in convincing an employer to make a job offer. Brazen Careerist still offers the opportunity to list more traditional resume elements, as well.

Brazen Careerist isn’t the first to offer a social resume; sites like WorkScore have rolled out similar projects over the past year or so. But Brazen Careerist offers some clear benefits to its users. As a full-fledged social networking site, it’s already updated more than 100,000 times a month. It’s got a user base that is strong enough to bring employers to the table and employers are already paying attention to the value of social resumes on Brazen Careerist. Penelope Trunk, the founder of Brazen Careerist, says, “We know that employers are already seeing huge return on investment from using social media for recruiting, rather than depending on resumes. The biggest hurdle for companies to use social media for recruiting is to find relevant conversations online. Brazen Careerist provides a showcase of the professional conversations that are most likely to be useful to companies.”

Making use of Brazen Careerist’s social resumes is a surprisingly simple matter. Set up a profile on the site, and then just choose a few ideas you’re particularly proud of. Trunk suggests, “Join a few networks focused on topics that interest you. And then jump in and start commenting on questions people have posed. At first it seems hard if you’re not used to leaving feedback, but there’s no way to make a mistake. Employers will see what you want them to see, and the conversations are ways of you finding out what you’re especially smart and insightful about. So talk a lot in networks that interest you, pull out the comments you like best and put them at the top of your social resume.”

You choose each item listed among your top ideas and you can quickly shuffle it around, especially if you have the sense that an employer will be looking you up online in the near future. It creates a quick glimpse into all those things you do that wouldn’t show up on a resume but still make you a valuable employee, such as blogging about your industry or finding ways to make telecommuting a better fit for your job. “This is important because employers can Google you, and find random stuff about you, but really what employers want is a snapshot of the professional you from your online activity,” Trunk points out. “The social resume on Brazen Careerist allows you to give employers exactly what they want, because you control the content.”

Have you considered setting up a social resume?

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