I really wish I could take full credit for this, but truth be told, this strategy is a knock-off of an idea I picked up from Eric Jaquith. (If you were among the fortunate few who attented SourceCon 2007, then you know what a whiz he is.) I started to snatch down somebody’s resume to demonstrate this process, but thought that somehow it would come back to haunt me. So what I have done instead is use my own resume with the reminder that this is for demonstration purposes only. (Click here to download my resume and see this trick in action. Be sure to double-click on the speaker icon and turn your speakers up.)

But I digress…

COOL TRICK: How to embed your voice inside of a resume

Let’s say that you are a TPR (Third Party Recruiter) or a Corporate Recruiter or a Retained Searchfirm, or whatever and you are SOOOO excited about a particular candidate that you will just bust if the hiring manager does not review the resume. However, the Hiring Manager is very, very busy and does not have the luxury of time to look at the resumes he asked you to produce, much less listen to all of the reasons why they should interview your candidate right away. So what do you do?

Well, you might want to try embedding a voice message into the resume you send in; that way they can hear your excitement and pay closer attention to the document that were planning to quickly scan over.

“So Jim,” you say, “That sounds interesting, but I don’t know how to do that.”

“No worries, all you need is a copy of Microsoft Word and a microphone,” I reply, “Let me show you how to do it.”

STEP-BY-STEP

1. Make sure you have a microphone that works with your computer. No biggie, as you can pick one up at Wallmart for $10.00 (more or less).

2. Open up a new Word document

3. Pull down the Insert Menu and click on: “Object”

4. From the Object window scroll down to “Wave Sound.”

5. Highlight “Wave Sound” and click “Okay.”

6. A little window that looks like a tape recorder pops up.

7. Click on the red dot button and begin recording your message. By default you get sixty seconds, but if you stop the recording before it gets to the very end and start recording again, you get sixty more seconds.

8. Once you’re done recording, close out that window.

9. Like magic, a speaker icon appears in your Word document.

10. To play back the sound file, simply double-click on the speaker icon.

11. Add a message next to the speaker to remind the reader that an audio message is embedded. (You might also want to mention that they should be sure to have their speakers on.)

And that’s it! Pretty cool huh?

*(Now I started this demo with a blank document and then I cut and pasted my resume in, but that does not matter as the resume could have been there the whole time.)

I would very much like to hear your comments on this and (even better) solicit your testimonials on how this strategy has worked for you. If you would, simply leave a comment below. And again, to see a working demo of this: Click here to download my resume, double-click on the speaker icon and turn your speakers up.

Good luck!

-Jim Stroud

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Tags: careers, Demo, How To, interview, resume, Technology