The illustrator, Sean McNally, took a novel approach – and turned his CV into a character sheet straight out of Dungeons and Dragons. It’s a great way to showcase your experience, learning and self-assessed character traits while also demonstrating your understanding of the genre.

What would you do if this resume came across your desk?

Via GeekDad.

This post from the ComScore folks shows just how much attention LinkedIn is receiving from those looking for work.

By cross-pollinating use pattern data, Andrew Lipsman was able to show that LinkedIn visitors were significantly more focused on job hunting than the general internet user. This means that LinkedIn users are actively employing platforms such as LinkedIn to activate and enrich their social and professional networks as a means to find work. Five years ago this wouldn’t have happened. Three years ago it would have been for “early adopters”. This year – perhaps being driven by the global financial crisis, people are turning to any and all tools that help us build and maintain people powered networks.

By the way, don’t forget to check out the latest job listings! Happy hunting.

Eventually I landed a job but soon realised that the job safety net – the job for life – no longer existed. I met and worked with many people who were forced to change their jobs or to retire – and with this came isolation, confusion and fear. After all, back then there was no such thing as LinkedIn or Facebook – we were lucky to see one computer in an office of 100 employees. Social networking was something that happened after work – at the pub – and it was not necessarily conducive to showcasing your skills, aspirations or hidden talents (drinking games aside).

Social media, however, now provides us all with ready-made tools to showcase our talents. It provides the perfect way to share our OWN career stories, publish our portfolio of creative work or even receive public endorsement of our capabilities.

If you happen to be out of work, or are starting to look for your next opportunity, it will be worth reading Chris Brogan’s free eBook – How to Use the Social Web to Find Work. It may well be the most important thing you read this year.

Spend a few minutes taking in the statistics, revelations and predictions that have seen this video receive over 6 million views in the last year. Then think about your business. Think about your career. And then look to the future. Does it seem so predictable?

But is there a way to hive off part of your Facebook profile in a way that works for your professional life? Is it possible to manage Facebook in a way that ENHANCES your professional profile? It seems that there is!

Boris Epstein has a great post on using Facebook for Networking. It involves:

• Setting up separate Friends lists
• Identifying relevant professional groups
• Participating in group activities/discussions and events

Just make sure that you remember that with social media, you are always on the job!

Now, when it comes to job hunting, there is much you can learn from instructional design. And in this neat, 15 minute presentation from Michaels and Associates, you can see how just one of the standard instructional design models (ADDIE) can be applied to your job search.

Best of luck!

Have you or your business used social media to attract or place staff? Do you know someone who has? How did that person work out?

So far, SocialMediaJobs.com.au has matched some great people with great jobs – but I have a feeling it is just the tip of the iceberg.

But what are the best examples?

Marek Wolski, a young marketer from Melbourne shows the way with some great uses of Slideshare to demonstrate his thinking, approaches to his career and even his resume.

Seen something similar? Do tell!

Digital Brief

View more documents from Marek W.

But the next best thing to a personal recommendation is a “social recommendation”. That is, a recommendation from someone within your social network. Now, some people have large social networks thanks to Twitter, Facebook and blogging, but even discounting this fact – we are unlikely to recommend someone whom we don’t know or don’t trust. This means that a social recommendation can be acted on with some confidence.

Stan Johnson is well aware of this fact. Not only does he write the respected Australian marketing blog, BrandDNA, he regularly writes a feature article Around the Blogosphere for Marketing Magazine. This month he suggests that we all Get Connected. As Stan says:

A blog is not for everyone, but done well it can help boost your profile in industry. They are great as an online CV. You can post details of yourself, samples of your work. And they give you a web presence of your own.

So as the recession rolls on, rather than just turning up each day and staying out of the way of the HR Director, why not get working on your social media profile and connections. You never know when they’re going to come in handy.

There is one important thing to remember about CVs – it won’t get you a job – it just opens doors.

Many people spend a vast amount of time writing up their CVs. They fill out each section with detail after detail – from their first job through to their last. But, in my view, a CV is not necessarily about explaining your experience. The CV has a single objective – and that is getting you an interview.

One way of doing this is to clearly differentiate your CV from everyone else’s. (Look at it from the employer’s point of view: if you are on the receiving end of 100 CVs for a single job, then they all start to become a blur after a while.) How can you do this? Start by reading Blogs are the new CVs. Then consider how you can DEMONSTRATE your skills in the production of your CV.

A great example of this approach was sent to me by Mounir Bekkouche. As he says:

As a graduate in advertising looking for a job all around the world (but preferably in London where I am living), this is my own story-telling campaign aiming at showing my ability to manage an advertising project (including viral videos, blogging, social networking, public relation, etc.) from beginning to end…
Because of the Recession, I wanted to show what I am capable of and to differentiate myself from the other applicants through my passion for Japanese comics…

Now, I certainly don’t have the graphic skills of Mounir, but there are plenty of creative ways to present our capabilities, skills and experience. It just means thinking outside of the box. Give it a go. What have you got to lose?