Video Resumes
“I don’t think you can communicate creatively and attitude through a resume.” ~Employer
Being in the job hunt has made me think deeper about how to present myself and what I’ve accomplished. I’ve also been thinking over a recent interview question about ‘being innovative’ that I felt I answered poorly, despite having done numerous ‘innovative’ and creative things in my life. The idea of a video montage highlighting the creative things that I’ve done came to mind, so I ‘googled’ “video resume” and tons of stuff came up. It turns out that YouTube has made the video resume a hit. There are tons of video resumes online and I would consider most of them pretty poor in quality. A few of them I’d consider worthy of actually being a video. Afterall, what’s the point of doing a video if everything you say is on your resume? Maybe people just like to show their pretty face on a video, but really, if you’re not going to show the graphic and visual things that you’ve done, why do it in a video? Also, if you’re just going to talk to a camera for five minutes, I”m sure the employer would rather just meet you in person. The other thing that struck me was a video on video resume etiquette, which bascially emphasized doing a boring video with miminal risk or interesting features. I think video resumes should be creative, have some flare and break out the traditional resume stereotypes. Resumes are inherently non-creative. Every resume workshop I’ve been to has emphasized not to do anything unusual on your resume. I would like to hope that a video resume would allow people to break out of the old molds and be free to express oneself in whatever way they feel suits the situation. Below I’ve highlighted some of what I consider the good and the bad of my brief browsing of video resumes on youtube.
CBS News on Video Resumes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kz9AODQkmiM
Good:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cOcOyb1mdA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoodirGsX-o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7CIHLoATwc
Boring:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Za8F7tdR2UY
Pointless:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xb6Fdze9Ds
Running across Canada
Recently some CBC producers went on my website www.trailrunner.ca and uploaded a unique running opportunity in the forum section. The producers are seeking 12 runners who will re-trace the steps of Terry Fox (at the same rate as Terry) in the summer of 2009. It’s a 4 month commitment and you have to submit a video to apply for a spot. A while back I began to compose a list of people who have run across Canada, here’s what I have so far:
There was Kevin in 2000 who crossed Canada in 222 days covering 8078km
http://www.runninginto2000.com
There was Anne Keane who currently has the Guiness Record for crossing Canada in 143 days over 7831km
http://www.powerofpeoplerun.com/
Google Maps recent ‘walking speed’ addition seems to think that it would take only 55 days walking to get from Vancouver to Halifax – that’s fast – guess it doesn’t count on you sleeping 
Parkour..you say what?
So apparently I’ve missed an entire underground running movement, perhaps that’s because I do all of my running ‘aboveground’. But I was interested in an article that came across my email about ‘parkour’ a new running ‘style’ where people basically navigate around our urban jungles jumping off of buildings, concrete walls and whatever else gets in their way. While I’ve seen some youtube videos about what I would call ‘urban gymnastics’ and I was very impressed – I don’t really understand parkour. The online news article describes parkour as a unique running style, but I think it’s still more like gymnastics or skateboarding without a skateboard. There are a few very huge issues here raised in the article – this ‘sport’ may make sense as a small underground movement, but can we really have hundreds of people running around the city jumping off of buildings and concrete walls? I think some people need to know their limits and keep unique underground movements for the exclusive few who truly exhibit the character of the activity. If average folks want to do something like this then follow Toronto and build a facility for it or better yet – try trail running – a sport that I love and that allows people to run, jump over logs and brush, climb trees (if you’re bored with running), fall down hills, cross creeks and all sorts of other diversions if you choose, such as doing chin-ups on low-hanging branches. Do you really want to spend more time in the concrete jungle?
Official website of Jonathan R. Schmidt