Engagement and career. Career development is a contributing factor in employee engagement. How do we help people with their career development or how can we more fully engage in our own career development?
Visual resumes. As an active member of slideshare, I have noticed a number of visual resumes appearing. The slide show creator used slides to present who they are and what they do. I believe this is a very useful career development exercise so I took a stab at it myself and encourage you to do the same. Take a glance at what I created:
If the slideshow does not load in this window, click here.
Pecha Kucha. My first attempt was 15 slides. I now think it would be both interesting and creative to pair visual resumes with Pecha Kucha – 20 slides shown for 20 seconds each resulting in a 6 minute and 40 second presentation.
What is Pecha Kucha? Here is a little information on Pecha Kucha:
The 20×20 format of Pecha Kucha is now also being adopted in the business world, with some company internal business presentations being run in a strict 6 minutes 40 seconds, with all discussion and questions held to the end of the presentation. This is primarily a device to help timebox presentations, force presenters to be more focused in their message, allow them to flow uninterrupted, and ultimately to avoid the “death by powerpoint” syndrome, of sitting through long and often tedious PowerPoint presentations.
Visual resumes using a Pecha Kucha format. You could combine your slides with voice over or music and set them to change every 20 seconds. You could send out these visual resumes or share them within your organization. You could post it online if you have a blog or website. You could post it on slideshare. You could present your resume for a job interview and ask for just 6 minutes and 40 seconds to do this. In addition, there are many more format or applications of this medium, I have only touched upon a few basic applications.
Benefits. I found the slide format forced me to think both visually and succinctly. Here are some of the benefits of creating a visual resume paired with Pecha Kucha:
- A fresh and innovative way to think about yourself and what you do.
- The opportunity to make your efforts and contributions more visually appealing.
- The discipline of being concise and determining the essence of who you are and what you do.
- An easy format to make a career development presentation in your organization, for a job move, or to put online so people know more about you.
- A significant contribution to developing your personal brand so others know your strengths and the value you offer.
- Ease of revision, you can quickly revise a slide, delete a slide, add a new slide, etc.
- A simple and easy format for organizations to learn more about you.
- Make your career points with power rather than just having another long and drawn out PowerPoint presentation.
- Saving time for people who view your slides or attend your presentation.
Try it on for size. I encourage you to try this and let me know how it turns out or send me a link so I can view it. My thinking on this is in the very initial stages but I believe there is great potential. We are so overloaded with information. I believe this format may help us be noticed in a way that does not overload others with too much information.
I want your feedback. Let me know what you think of this idea or offer some feedback on my first attempt at using this medium. I plan to revise the first attempt and make This is David Zinger Version 1.1 into 20 slides. In another revision I will add sound and have 20 second slide transitions.
Quite interesting David. As I’ve been doing a lot of resume digging, interviews and reference checks lately this is quite intriguing to me. I think a video with audio as well would be a great way to sell oneself. From the manager’s perspective anyway, I think it would be very easy to eliminate the ones who are not worth interviewing which you can’t always tell on paper from.
I read an interesting post lately by LeadershipNow called, “I Hired Your Resume. But Unfortunately What I Got Was You!” This style of presentation puts a lot more YOU into the details otherwise on paper.
I like it!
Mike,
I always appreciate you comments. The potential benefit of this over video/audio is that if it is sent to you just as 20 slides, you can click through them very quickly.
David
Wow, this is a really cool idea, and something that I think is worth a try, thanks for the great post.
Steve:
Let me know after you do it, I’d love to take a look and I appreciated a short visit I just had to your website. You write well and have a great range of resources.
David