Rebuild the Resume, LinkedIn

Each week, my writing course The Interactive Voice reevaluates classic writing forms, contrasts newer online models, and critiques specific student examples. In the third week, we look at avatars, or written and digital selves.

I start the week by asking students to post their resumes on LinkedIn. If they’ve converted to a LinkedIn profile already, I simply ask for an update or, if they are willing, a creative experiment. As always in my classes, the writing process matters most.

By the end of the week, students draft at least two versions of their resume. The first version deals with the angst-ridden process of putting yourself on paper and making major decisions about next steps in your life. It’s an anxiety my students know well and that many of their parents face too.

To write a resume, you have to get past who you are, what you want, what you didn’t do, where you failed, and how you can fix it before you write a word. Some people wear this stress on their forehead, while others bury it down in their heartburn. Few treat resume writing casually.

Yet the writing process manages our worries beautifully—if we let it. It can both reveal and create what we want. Don’t rush this first step. Write a big, bold manifesto of self-interest that, fortunately, no one will ever see.

The second draft answers the needs of the job to which it applies. Writing is also designed for this—to convince an audience that their goals are the same as the author’s. A successful resume shows a human resources department you’ve been working all your life to develop the skills necessary for the one job they have available.

Many students still put an “objective” at the top of their resume. The objective was once a standard device that grew indulgent and unpopular. Students write them open-ended now—“I hope to do something in media!”—and avoid both of the requirements I just outlined. They don’t make any hard creative choices for themselves, so they can’t answer the needs of potential employers.

You can’t honestly tell HR you are the right person for the job if you only have a vague idea of what you want to do.

A good resume is like a grant proposal. You look up the people giving away money and read about the goals they want to achieve. If their needs don’t match yours, you keep looking.

Of course, the second resume doesn’t work for LinkedIn because LinkedIn doesn’t have any needs. It’s just a middleman. It’s not your audience, the potential employer, and you can’t know what employer might discover you on LinkedIn either, so you can’t tailor your resume to them.

That leaves us with the first draft of the resume drafting process—the job-hunter’s needs. A good LinkedIn profile is a narrative reflecting either a clear direction or a set of skills indicating strong interests and possibilities.

I wrote last year about how LinkedIn should help people find new careers or side gigs with algorithms that search profiles for unexpected skill sets and combinations.

Linkedin should also help job hunters write these better personal narratives that don’t come naturally to us. The platform should creatively nudge users to switch from the old-guard resume to the online, interactive, and multimedia presence of the future.

Users would revolt though, at least at first. Most job-hunters want nothing to do with the first draft resume. Most LinkedIn profiles forgo all creative options and stick as closely as possible to the most conservative interpretation of the old resume.

The “luck” or “destiny” of letting human resources departments spin the roulette wheel of jobs is still far easier than a clear decision to change all of your family’s lives for your dreams. Creativity just means greater risk and heavier responsibility.

Whether we like it or not, the Web is changing the way employers and employees find one another. Both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal have reported on how major companies now evaluate candidates by their online and social media presences—not by their resumes.

The future of job hunting is happening now. LinkedIn can either embrace it, or become the network for those unwilling to do so.