Can Internet Video Help Land You A Job?
by Mark McClure
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Mark McClure
 Bio:
Mark McClure's a Tokyo-based career coach, IT consultant and CCIE #10814 with clients worldwide. For those experienced network engineers and team leaders interested in Mark's IT career coaching options you can find out more at http://techcareerzigzag.com. CCIEFLYER wishes to thank Mark for the many articles shared with our readers: |
In tough economic times the competition for good IT positions gets fiercer and even a CCIE needs to have an "ace in the hole" to land a covetted position.
When faced with this job hunting jungle many people first think to dust off and revamp their resume. And that's an important step because a resume remains a valuable document for employers screening out poorly matched applicants.
However, as there are likely to be other great resumes in the 'to-be-interviewed' pile, what can you do to make yours stand out?
One approach might be to make creative use of the fact that Internet video is becoming more popular with broadband-connected surfers - what with YouTube, iPods and a ton of video-distribution web sites.
There are two video ideas I'd like to mention in this article and the first one is the "video resume"where job seekers can hire an online service to make and host the video.
From a candidate's perspective this might appear to be a great way to 'brand' yourself and your tech experience in a hiring manager's mind. Alas, there may be potential legal minefields in some countries related to discriminatory hiring, should a rejected candidate learn (or be able to prove) that their video was also viewed as part of the 'screening process'. Sorry, but your video may not even be allowed a viewing in some corporations!
Another complication is that of time - or the lack of. Consider a hiring manager who's received 50 video resumes. Even if each resume is just 5 minutes that's over 4 hours of viewing time. Again, not likely.
An interesting discussion on Video resumes is this 2007 post on Cheezhead's blog at http://www.cheezhead.com/2007/11/06/video-resumes/.
The second idea is where you avoid appearing on the video. Just create a short (less than 5 minutes is ideal) screen capture of you explaining (for example) a specific technology point, or highlighting in 'notepad' your troubleshooting experience and approach. (Don't mention any company names or personnel names in the video - see below.)
Then upload the video to YouTube and send the interviewing manager a 'thank you' email with the link. Even if they can't watch it at work because of firewall or HR's hiring rules, they can still choose to watch it at home in private...
Or, if you're concerned about public internet access to your video, upload it to a wordpress blog as a password protected post. First test the password works(!) and then send the url in the thank you email. You can always delete the post later.
As a PC user I made a 6 minutes 'branding' and promotional video for a CD-based product using Camtasia Studio version 3 and a Plantronics USB headset microphone.
After some tweaking I got a 640 x 480 format AVI file which was uploaded to YouTube and, for the curious amongst you, can be viewed here: http://markmccluretoday.com/still-think-you-can-manage-time.
This video is (in my opinion) good enough quality as a free marketing tool on YouTube. If I was preparing one for a hiring manager I'd do some additional research on getting it to display better on YouTube. (Although it looks and streams fine from my own web site as a Macromedia Flash file.)
Finally as a word of warning, be careful on publicly-available videos not to reveal any information about your current (or previous) employer's networks, technologies or practices which might get you into trouble.
I would not refer to a company by name but instead say something like a "leading global aerospace company" if you want to mention a sector you have experience in. What you say or not say is your responsibility - so be careful out there!
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