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Lights Camera Action LAND A JOB!

Sriparna Chakraborty
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
Sriparna Chakraborty
A recent graduate from United States Washington State University, Benjamin Hampton set out to do something different to impress employers. He posted a 5½ minute long video on YouTube. The communications major student with his brother at the camera starts with “the résumé took me 45 minutes to film and 30 minutes to edit.” The video continues, with him playing a short song on the piano, information about his job experiences all accompanied with a background song by band Coldplay. This was enough to impress Microsoft’s PR firm Waggener Edstrom, and he was called for an interview soon after.

Hampton is not the only one to have resorted to a video résumé; there are thousands of job seekers who are trying out this innovative method of presenting themselves. It’s a way to stand out of competition and boost chances of getting hired. The Internet has been a major force behind this. With faster bandwidth and availability of numerous video-hosting sites, job seekers are trying to create an impression through the video format, online. While some include in their video résumés conventional personal introductions, wherein they answer common interview questions or read out their résumé, others opt for a more creative approach.

Take the example of Trent Willis, a political consultant was seeking a career change. Willis is not from an Ivy League college and therefore to beat competition, he turned his résumé into a parody of campaign advertisements. The advertisement begins with “Do you know who Trent Willis is?” His résumé e-mailed to various firms included a link to his video résumé in YouTube, had him lined up for interviews all through
the month.

However, sometimes landing a job might not be that easy. Yale student, Aleksey Vayner’s video became a YouTube classic. It made its way from the investment banker UBS, where he had applied, to the video hosting site and became a thing of ridicule. It was titled ‘Impossible is Nothing’ and showed him lifting weights, doing karate and dancing with a scantily clad woman while his voice echoed behind in the 30 minute show.

YouTube, Google and various other job hosting sites across U.S. have already latched onto video résumés. YouTube opens up

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