Writing for life

“Working it” column published in the Career Moves section of The Evening Echo on 17/03/2008

I’ve started using LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com) a sort of grown-up social network for business contacts. It’s kind of like the business world’s equivalent to Facebook and MySpace, but it’s serious stuff – no Vampires, no throwing sheep, no movie quizzes and no posting embarrassing photos of your friends for all the world to see. LinkedIn may be an online social network, but it’s all strictly above board.

The reason I mention it is that, though I’ve had the account for quite a while, I only started to use it last week. I uploaded by e-mail address book into it and hey presto, it found loads of people in my contact list who were also on LinkedIn. Great… I invited the ones I actually knew to connect to my network. Some of them even accepted. Wonderful. I looked at my profile. There was nothing in it.

I needed to dig out what I’d been doing over the years, and when… now, where was I going to find that sort of information? Certainly not in the sieve like contraption that serves as my memory. Oh yes… it would be on my CV: that long neglected document languishing somewhere in the bowels of my hard drive.

Eventually I found the file, dusted off the cobwebs and opened it up. I watched the blue bar trundle along the bottom of the screen as my current word processing software converted the document to a more modern format. It’s a shame it couldn’t have updated the content while it was at it.

The document that finally appeared on the screen hadn’t been touched for more years than I care to admit. It had always served me well, but looking at it now I can’t for the life of me work out how. It’s in desperate need of a makeover – a sort of “Ten Years Younger” for resumes, if you like. I resolved to tackle it as soon as I could find the time. For now though the antiquated document had served it’s purpose: my details in LinkedIn were up to date and all was well with my online world.

And then it occurred to me, hadn’t I just given my CV a makeover? Wasn’t my online profile essentially my CV dragged kicking and screaming into the 21^st century? It’s certainly more powerful, more dynamic, more accessible and ultimately more current than any paper document could ever hope to be.

Online career profiles – such as those you’ll find on LinkedIn – will ultimately consign the “legacy” paper CV to the scrap-heap of recruitment history. You won’t need to send out a printed copy on fancy watermarked paper with an even fancier covering letter (for which the planet will thank you) – you’ll just have to point your potential recruiter to your public profile (via e-mail, IM or VoIP, naturally) and hey presto… job done.

Of course the true power of a network like LinkedIn isn’t in its ability to replace the humble CV. It’s about harnessing the potential of the all important network of contacts you’ve manage to garner over your working life. There are so many people I’ve worked with over the years who I wish I’d managed to maintain contact with: people who could have offered advice, guidance and expertise in no end of situations. But I didn’t, so they couldn’t….

I’ve only just started to build up my online network, but already I’ve connected with some old names from the past, as well as the present. The potential is boundless. Don’t bin the old CV just yet – but trust me, this is the future.

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