3 Tips for Making Your Video Resume Consistent to Your Written Resume

By: Debra Wheatman

Debra Wheatman, CPRW, CPCC is president of Careers Done Write, a premier career-services provider focused on developing highly personalized career roadmaps for senior leaders and executives across all verticals and industries. Debra may be contacted directly at debra@careersdonewrite.com. Visit her site at: careersdonewrite.com. Follow Debra on Twitter.

Consistency in your personal, professional marketing materials is very important to executing a successful job search and attracting employers. Your traditional resume, cover letter, LinkedIn profile, and video resume should complement one another by reinforcing your brand on multiple fronts. Having a unified set of materials to share with prospective employers demonstrates your attention to detail and commitment to producing good work – a signal to your employer that you can and will produce if hired. Below are three tips you can implement today to ensure that your video resume is consistent with your written materials.

• Highlight the same set of achievements. Your video resume should reference and discuss what you have provided in your traditional resume. Discussing a totally different achievement in your video that isn’t included in your written resume might devalue your resume and emphasize the wrong skill or experience. As a result, an employer may find your presentation confusing.
  
  
• Follow the same chronological order of your professional history. If you choose to record yourself going over your professional history, be organized about the order of your descriptions of where you’ve worked. What you have written should coincide with your verbal presentation. You may have a functional resume that shows experiences out of order to serve a certain purpose; if you decided to go with this approach, do the same on video.
  
  
• Use a script. In the case where you might have received external help in your written resume, your “voice” on video may be quite different from what you have on paper. Your word choice, style, and diction, if professionally enhanced, might be disconnected from your natural way of speaking. To prevent this “disconnect” in your video, utilize a scripted approach that you have practiced to ensure you sound natural and you are relaxed in your delivery. This could be the difference between a video that is poorly done vs. one that allows you to shine.

Consistency is the name of the game when attracting company recruiters. Competition for the best jobs forces employers to find reasons to reject candidates. Give yourself the best opportunities by demonstrating consistency, clarity, and a natural approach to ensure you achieve a competitive advantage.