I feel compelled to say it:  I am more than the sum of my resume, my LinkedIn profile and my Facebook page. I am not simply the compilation of my previous titles. 

Like The Artist Formerly Known as Prince (when he was in that stage), I cannot simply be squeezed into the box of my past work labels – labels that are usually more helpful in describing the employer than the employee.

Same goes for you.

Still, any time we are asked to define our professional selves, we are bound by the traditional, linear form of recounting our experiences and making them add up to something that fits the opportunity at hand.

On the one hand, work keeps cropping up that demands innovative approaches and creative, customized solutions – in short, we need to find good minds with relevant experience.  On the other hand, we still evaluate candidates for this work primarily using some form of the tired resume – the limitations of which force us to rely on gut reactions and side conversations with References to gauge the existence of “hybrid” skills, say, or a candidate’s ability to think on the right side and left side of the brain simultaneously.

Seems like it’s high time for a revamp of the venerable CV.  When will Monster.com or one of its competitors show us the future – a resume with some nuance, clear information and artful presentation – resume 2.0?

By resume 2.0 I don’t mean moving the traditional format to a digital arena or surrounding it with the functionality of a social networking milieu.  I’m talking about the actual form, the organization of the information we use to convey interests, professional skills, and gray matter.  I’m talking about an arresting way to portray skillsets and enable pattern recognition that is immediately useful in matching qualified people to emerging, complex opportunities. 

As Edward Tufte, the master of information would say, we need to create “beautiful evidence” of the candidates at hand.

I was in the East Village a few nights ago with a friend from LA.  “How can I possibly describe what I do?” he lamented, talking about his current portfolio of projects and some work he wanted to pitch.  Is he a web producer?  A choreographer? A director?  A content producer?  A creator?  A creative?  Smart?

Just how wide can he go in describing himself before it sounds like he has no real skills at all?  How narrow before he sounds one-dimensional in a multi-dimensional world?

In fact, he is an ecosystem of very specific skillsets, smart enough to take advantage of the various distribution points at his disposal and to apply his many talents to interesting, sophisticated projects. So what should his resume say to reflect that?

I propose (Monster, are you listening?) we develop the professional tag cloud. Not familiar with those?  Click on this and imagine your face in the center of a cloud of words that describe your skills and your experience. The words vary in size depending on how much weight they are given.

If you’ve won numerous awards, AWARDS will float big and fat, like a neon sign advertising the quality of your work.  If you have a little bit of web experience, but lots of TRADITIONAL ADVERTISING experience, those degrees of knowledge would be instantly apparent.

It may still be important to have a separate list of past experiences and past employers.  But, like a photo on Flickr, candidates have many weighted facets and we’re not weighing them.  Like an entry on Del.icio.us they float in a cloud of descriptors, some of which are more apt than others.   What we need is a standardized yet artful and useful way to quickly capture the relevant backstory about a knowledge worker – a device that allows us to see the combination of skills, experience and background.  A cloud of evaluation.

C’mon Monster how about it?  What about a beta site to help develop the candidate snapshot of the future?  (Or, while I’m thinking about it – what about you, Match.com – introduce the new tag cloud romantic profile!)

We are more than 2-dimensional pieces of paper.  It’s high time we started floating.

**to read more articles by this author, click on the name under the headline**

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