Just Be Yourself… Just Not Who You Really Are
Have you ever asked somebody, “how can I get this job?” What is this company looking to hire? Some people will say you need to be generic, don’t stand out too much, be what the job offer is asking you to be. On the other hand, you may have people telling you just to be yourself, be unique, stand out from the crowd and give them a reason to take another look. So which one of these options is the best way to go?
While reading a chapter about being generic in the book Down and Out in the New Economy by Ilana Gershon… I found that the answer to this question really comes with what kind of job you want. Every person sends in a resume and every hiring manager or recruiter is going to look at those resumes, are more than likely going to look at your LinkedIn profile. If you don’t have a LinkedIn profile, it might be a red flag, so it’s highly recommended that anybody should get one. The thing you must remember is “everyone is engaging with standardize forms to represent themselves, but they have to use the standardize forms to represent themselves as distinctive” (Gershon 62). Everyone is going to send in a resume, fill out that job application form and try to dazzle their own way into getting that job.
Nowadays, resumes are considering to be a marketing tool and are emailed or sent in to hiring managers/recruiters, where they looked through hundreds of thousands of applications all day saying the same thing. In order to have a great resume, we are told that they need to be concise and relate to only the job that you are applying for. There should not be any excess jobs that have no relation to the job you are applying for, you are marketing yourself as that future potential employee and “people are tactically referring to one of the ways in which the metaphor that the self is a business is now common” (Gershon 69).
Then there’s LinkedIn, another form of a marketing tool, which can be used to connect to employers, express your work experience, and also can be used or looked at by any company looking to hire. In contrast from a resume, “LinkedIn profiles are public, online, and composed with the broadcast professional audience in mind” (Gershon 70).
LinkedIn as a collection of all the work experience, academic background information, any information about you in general let me apply to jobs. LinkedIn is unique because it gives you the chance to put all your information out there that may apply to any type of job, so they are considered to be a very general resume of sorts. A problem that many people find with LinkedIn is that since it is a collection of all your work and experience (some with no relation to one another), some may see it as you are“ willing to take a range of different jobs, providing supporting evidence for this on your profile could mean that recruiters or hiring managers my think you were unfocused or difficult to classify” (Gershon 71). I think that while maybe not every job should be included on the official resume, I believe jobs that may not be an exact same field to the job you’re applying for could also be beneficial.
I, myself, am in the broadcasting industry; an industry that I have only joined within the past nine months (aka not much experience for a soon-too-be graduate). I know that being a late bloomer in this industry definitely makes me stand out from other candidates, seeing that i have not been involved in this since I was a freshman or sophomore. Before I decided to be in production, I was switching majors and trying to figure out what I want to do with my life. Besides being a full-time student and a student athlete, I am also a part-time waitress between two different restaurants for the past eight years. While waitressing has nothing to do with being in the broadcast industry, I do think that there are great qualities that those jobs can show on a resume and make me stand out from the crowd a little bit. One quality it shows is loyalty, me being at a location for a long period of time shows that I do not quit and have learned to take on bigger responsibilities. Working in a restaurant environment helps build teamwork skills, in a restaurant everyone has their part and the restaurant can fail if one person is lacking. Waitressing can show you how to deal with high pressured situations a time. Trust me, try coming to Federal Hill in Baltimore during a Ravens home game, and you tell me if thats a high pressure situation. I also think without having some sort of background information in a future employers life, how will you know if they will get along with other employers? So I think that being too generic with a resume can also be harmful, in that particular setting.
The internship I am in now is through the Media Department, as I have mentioned before, I am really starting to understand what it truly takes to be part of this industry. Nothing, especially in the television world, is going to be handed to you. I need to develop more skill and knowledge, which I have learned over the past couple months. I think connections are going to be huge, not just connecting on LinkedIn, but keeping in contact and always asking for advice. I worked for the Eli Eisenberg, the president of VPC, Inc., he has seen the potential I have and gave me a few tips of equipment, tips within the industry, and help polish my resume. He knows the hard work I am willing to put forth to one day be that highly respected figure that he is.
