Beefing Up a Resume
Sure the job market is tough, even for some professions that used to have applicants pondering multiple employment offers. But would you include a beefcake photo with your résumé to get a job?
Brian Zulberti of Delaware sent out his résumé in an e-mail to prospective employers. He attached a picture of himself wearing a T-shirt showing off his very defined biceps.
“I was desperate, to an extent,” the 2009 Villanova Law School graduate told the News Journal in Delaware. Zulberti had hoped the photo would give him a competitive edge. In another photo, posted on his Facebook page, Zulberti is half-nude holding a sign that says, “HIRE ME!!! no… as a Lawyer, … NOT A ESCORT… wait is it something I’m wearing.”
Notwithstanding the punctuation and grammatical errors (it’s “an” escort), Zulberti is drawing some attention and not all good.
“Seriously? Has this man no shame?” wrote Staci Zaretsky in a blog post for Above the Law.
I would say both photos were inappropriate. Really, what is it with the things people post online?
In a similar social media faux pas, a reporter for an ABC affiliate in Huntsville, Ala., was fired because of things she posted on a blog, Paul Gattis reported for the Huntsville Times.
One confession read, “I’ve gone bra-less during a live broadcast and no one was the wiser.”
Shea Allen told Gattis that she regrets that the posts caused her to lose her job. She said they were “meant as Overheard in the Newsroom, just a funny thing, making fun of the subtle nuances of my job.”
“For job seekers it is essential to be aware of what information they’re making available to employers, and to manage their online image,” says Rosemary Haefner, vice president of human resources at CareerBuilder. “At the same time, hiring managers and human resources departments must carefully consider how to use information obtained from social media and whether it is relevant to a candidate’s qualifications.”
Forty-three percent of current hiring managers who research candidates via social media said they have found information that has caused them to reject a candidate, according to a CareerBuilder survey.
A new FindLAW survey found that 29 percent of young social media users fear their posts could cause trouble at work and 21 percent of young social media users have removed or taken down a social media posting over employment concerns.
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Source: Washington Post