Advices on video resume, avoiding humiliation:
1 Don’t talk about yourself, have others talk about you
2 Focus on your strengths
3 Video should target job position
This is a story happened around five years ago.
Vayner, an aspiring investment banker, sent a video entitled "Impossible is Nothing" along with an 11-page resume and glamour shot to financial services powerhouse UBS. Within hours scores of investment banks noticed his application, as bankers e-mailed the seven-minute video and turned Vayner into the biggest joke on Wall Street.
As long as there have been job applicants, there have been application gaffes. Today, with e-mail as the preferred mode of corporate communication, that embarrassing camera phone picture or salacious IM to a coworker quickly travels far beyond company walls. So too can a boastful resume or cover letter.
That’s certainly what happened to Vayner. UBS is launching an internal investigation to figure who, if anyone, within the company leaked Vayner’s cover letter, over-the-top resume and video. Regardless of how it ended up in the Internet, Vayner's video has been passed from Bain Consulting, to Barclay's Capital, to Bank of America, even into Congress. The video quickly went viral, traveling from several blogs and onto YouTube, which eventually removed it from its sight, reportedly at Vayner's request.
In his video, Vayner shows off his varied skills: lifting a 495-pound weight, ballroom dancing to Latin musak, serving a tennis ball at 140 miles an hour, and, as a dramatic conclusion, breaking seven bricks with a karate chop. "Ignore the losers, bring your A-game, your determination and your drive to the field and success will follow you," advised the budding management guru in his slight Russian accent. "If you want to dance, dance," he says, before expertly waltzing a scantily clad woman around the room.
Vayner probably won't be hired on Wall Street any time soon, but e-embarrassment doesn't have to be career ending, says hiring experts. "You certainly have a reputation," says Richard Castellini Vice President of Consumer Marketing at CareerBuilder.com, "but still being young, someone might take a chance on you."
Younger employees, often devotees on MySpace and reality TV, are predisposed to online missteps in the workplace, says Castellini. "Voyeurism is an aspect of their lives," he says, "and they don't understand the ramifications of it." Employers often check out potential hires on social networking sites, so consider deleting that picture of you funneling beer or flashing the camera. "What we tend to tell our students about using new technologies," says University of Pennsylvania Career Services Director Patricia Rose, "is beware."
Avoiding embarrassment completely is better than a hundred apologies. So tailor your application to the industry, says Rose. Some fields, like advertising, fashion or entertainment, are more tolerant of creative applications. Vayner's video would be great, if he was applying to write satire for The Onion. But for banks, it's a flop. "The more conventional the industry, the more they want more conservative business practices demonstrated," says Choy. Before you apply, learn about the company and talk to alumni so you understand the industry.
Fortunately for Vayner, e-errors have a built-in delete button. The fall-out, while permanently archived on the Internet, doesn’t last as long with employers. "People have short memories," says Rose, "Wait until the smoke clears, and then you'll realize that people have relatively short attention spans."
@shuwen zhao
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