Evolution of the Job Search: From Paper Resume to Online Career Portfolio

This evolution is not limited to the corporation, it also affects the job seeker. As a result, online job boards are becoming one of the primary places most people look for a job, and where companies search for potential employees. Monster.com, HotJobs.com, Craigslist, Protuo.com, specialty sites and several other sites dominate a landscape in which millions of resumes are currently posted, each waiting to be accessed by recruiters and employers who, in turn, post approximately 70 percent of their openings online.

Even with the success of this recruitment avenue, the job boards have fallen short of providing a medium where those looking for jobs and those trying to fill them can exchange enough information to meet their unique requirements. The reasons of this include a lack of specific and relevant job descriptions, concerns about the security of personal information, the lack of updating information on the jobseekers in the database and ineffectiveness in following up on online applications. The main reason, however, is that the professional and personal information these first-generation services deal with are limited to the few hundred words that can be crammed into the text of a two-page resume. In addition, like all technology, it is not fail-safe. Jobseekers have found ways to become more highly noticed, whether or not they are truly the right fit for the job. One such technique is the use of keywords. A jobseeker can copy and paste words from the actual posted vacancy allowing their resume to be the first that’s comes up when the employer does a search. Yes, the online job board will bring you an increased number of potential jobseekers, but are they truly qualified? Services have also been created to spam online recruitment services. This tactic sends resumes out to multiple locations based on a matched keyword response. Job seekers, when using this technique, have no idea where their resume is being sent.

With this in mind, Protuo has come up with a solution. Using the current online job boards, www.protuo.com has taken it to the next level. Through a three-tiered offering, Protuo provides the ability to post to multiple boards from one centralized location; a proprietary Best Fit Match™ Technology, which provides a patent-pending algorithmic survey system best described as “Monster meets eHarmony;” and finally digital portfolios.

Protuo provides a larger breadth of candidates that potentially match the vacancy, by not limiting a corporation to one or two online boards. This technology provides a centralized location for posting, which doesn’t have you spending endless hours posting to each board individually. Protuo saves Human Resource teams an immeasurable amount of hours.

The Web has created new opportunities for people to express themselves online, including the ability to post personal information, share their creations and flesh out their electronic identities. Display your photos on Shutterfly; create a Web page on MySpace or FaceBook; share your thoughts on Blogs. Myriad sites collect peoples’ thoughts on everything from restaurants to movies to plumbers and dry cleaners. The Web is an immense venue for self-promotion, as well as self-destruction.

So far, this Web 2.0 phenomenon, as it’s called, has not helped job seekers, recruiters or employers to connect with each other more efficiently and effectively. However, it will sooner rather than later. When it does, the resume will be only one element—albeit an important one—in the increasingly robust and interactive online recruiting process.

With more individuals connecting to the Web via broadband connections, employers and Web sites devoted to recruiting can collect more detailed information from job seekers earlier in the recruiting life-cycle, though some have gone a little too far with the promotion of video for the mundane job. This can be a big help to employers because even after the first level of resume filtering, they typically face the problem of being drowned in a sea of resumes. Only a small percentage of these resumes are likely to be even close to what they are looking for. Therefore, recruiters are forced to manually through this virtual stack one by one in order to find any resume that may warrant further attention. This is very labor intensive, especially for the small to medium-sized businesses, which may or may not have an HR department. If they do, it is probably staffed with a minimal amount of help. What then? Has the online job market actually made it harder for a company to fill vacancies?

What if a company were able to augment a resume with the results of an automated survey, which job seekers were asked to fill out when submitting their resume to the job service? This would be a survey, which gauged a person’s aptitudes, behaviors, interests and skills not just as it relates to the job, but to the whole culture of the employer’s organization. Most hiring managers look at the skills and forget there is more to a candidate than credentials. That person needs to exemplify the make-up of the hiring organization. For example: “On a scale of 1 to 5, rate your reading skills.” “Are you a team player, or do you prefer to work on your own most of the time?” “How do you rate your project management skills?” “Do you work better in large organizations versus small start-ups?”

Requiring no more than ten minutes of a job seeker’s time, the survey provides several advantages. The survey’s focus would be broad enough that all employers could use it to whatever extent it suited them. They’d determine what mix and level of skills and aptitudes best match the needs of any particular position. Applied to a comprehensive resume search, an algorithmic methodology—such as Protuo’s patent-pending Best-Fit™ matching system—could help to zero in on the best-qualified and most suitable candidates. By surveying individuals in a generic and common way, this automated online survey could help employers adhere to regulations, such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which require employers to show they have evaluated all job applicants in exactly the same way. In addition, this provides an equal playing field for all applicants.

That’s only the first step toward using the Web to get beyond mere resume collection and searching. By definition, a resume can only briefly describe an applicant’s education and work experience. After all, the resume is merely one person’s statement of where they have worked and what they have accomplished; it provides no direct example of achievement. However, by using the Web, it would be easy for applicants to give employers access to precisely this kind of evidence: actual business reports and brochures they’ve written; Web pages they’ve designed; audio recordings or even videos of their sales presentations before an audience. What’s more, applicants could make documents available from others that attest to their accomplishments and excellence on the job: letters of recommendation, performance evaluations, certificates, citations, etc.

These are the items that traditionally comprised a career portfolio—typically a binder that showed off work-related materials used by public relations, artists, etc.—which was dropped off at the employer’s office. On the Web, this portfolio—enhanced by the addition of multimedia materials—can be made available for viewing all around the world at the convenience of any recruiter or potential employer.

Clearly, some ambitious and savvy job seekers have already figured out how to create their own stylish Web sites to present just this kind of electronic portfolio. However, most people do not have the time or inclination to take on that task and the fact is they don’t have to. To gain an edge, they can use Web-based career portfolio services that help create portfolios with minimum effort.

The best of these sites require just minutes to set-up a basic, yet stylish and useful portfolio. In the case of Protuo, the job seeker can select from numerous Web page templates and other options, each with its own graphic design and color scheme. Next, he or she uploads personal documents, videos and other items to be included in the portfolio as easily as if they were adding an attachment to an e-mail. These can be organized chronologically or by theme or by job relevance. Trying out new page templates and picking a new one is as easy as pressing a button.

Once the portfolio is done, its unique Web address may be included in a resume or any correspondence with potential employers. Each portfolio account may include a unique e-mail address, solely for use in job searches. All mail sent from this address could automatically match the portfolio’s graphic design. A password-based access mechanism can make certain that only authorized individuals get to view a portfolio’s contents. For example, Protuo uses Web 2.0/ AJAX security guidelines and Microsoft Security Standards (MSS). These are supported by the strong encryption and rigorous authentication properties of VeriSign SSL certificates, as well as other security measures that ensure that all documents are protected under copyright law. In addition, Protuo is compliant with SOX; HIPAA; California Breach Disclosure Act; GRAMM-LEACH-BLILEY ACT, and CIPA.

Today’s job seekers must understand that they are not the property of any company, nor are they defined by their job title or job description. Rather, they are their own brand, and like any brand owner, they must proactively nurture and promote the brand in order for the brand to sell. There is nothing more effective in this regard than an online career portfolio.

The advantages to be gained from creating a Web-based career portfolio extend well beyond simply promoting oneself electronically and at a relatively low cost. By forcing people to evaluate their careers—step by step, job by job—the career portfolio can help them better understand their strengths and weaknesses. The process may lead them to see themes and patterns in their work life that were not evident before and gain knowledge that may lead to better decisions about future career paths. Since such a portfolio is available for periodic updates and fine-tuning, it can be kept as useful as possible for as long as desired; even after starting a new job and preparing for the next move.

It’s important to understand that the online career portfolio does not obviate the need for preparing well-written and informative resumes and posting them on all appropriate job boards. Rather, the opposite is true: online job portfolios greatly enhance the online resume. Indeed, it will soon be impossible to imagine one without the other.
A resume states your ability, but a portfolio proves it.
Surely, were Horace Greeley alive today, he’d be urging his audience of ambitious job seekers to “Go online, young man, young woman. Go online and show your stuff.”