I must be too cloistered here at the law firm because I only see paper resumes. I’m talking about the old fashioned kind with "Education" and "Experience" filling the bulk of the page, and maybe some "Hobbies" or "Personal" (“I like movies”) at the bottom to give me something to talk about if the interview is going poorly. ("I like movies too.")
Which is not to say I didn’t notice Elle Woods’ video application to Harvard Law School in Legally Blonde. (Uh, my wife made me see it. Three times.)
Well, apparently, there is a raging debate out there (o.k., “raging” may be a little excessive) over the use of video resumes. Time and MSNBC have produced articles about it. Web sites have sprung up to exploit it. And blogs are out there lambasting the worst of them. (Did these people really expect to land a job with these things?)
Some (those helping create them for a fee) see video resumes as
de rigueur for the new technology generation. Others see them as a
dying fad that never caught on for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is employers can’t skim through them.
But what about the
legal aspects of video resumes? Should employers fear potential discrimination lawsuits if they receive them? Are the candidates themselves at risk for what they put on their videos?
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