A fairly recent trend in resume presentations has been to record a video of yourself to give your potential interviewers a chance to meet in a virtual face-to-face environment. YouTube has, of course, been a popular venue for uploading video resumes, since the service is highly indexed by search engines and you get to use their bandwidth for free. Another good place, particularly for college students who often already have a personal page, is on MySpace. Google Video is in a Beta phase at the time of this writing, but is being used by some people. You can always just remove your video after a new position has been secured.

If you have created a video resume and are submitting a printed resume for posting here on RF Cafe Jobs, please send the hyperlink to it for inclusion. You might as well exploit all of the tools available.

Probably the best approach to recording your own resume video is to spend some time watching some of the many available aforementioned video resume sources - preferably ones similar to what you plan to make. YouTube allows up to 100 MB or 10 minutes, so at 320x240 pixels, that will easily give you 5 minutes. It might require many "takes" to get a version that you like, but it is worth the trouble since the old adage about never getting a second chance to make a good first impression is really true. Be sure to have at least one other person critique your video resume for both content and your presentation. The most important thing is to appear as you really are - not as you perceive yourself, but how others do. Most people will watch a video or listen to a sound recording of themselves and cannot believe that they look and/or sound as others see them.

Any decent digital camera should work just fine, but stay away from cellphone cameras unless you have one of high-end versions. No one expects a Hollywood quality video from an engineer, but a low resolution video with all sorts of sampling and compression artifacts can be so distracting that it negates the advantage of having a video resume in the first place.

To give your effort a kick-start, I have searched around and linked to a few video resumes from around the Web. Some are really good, and some are very, very bad.

Aleksey Vayner This is one of the most widely viewed resume videos on the Internet. This poor guy has been pounded mercilessly for being so bold. He is (or was) a Yale graduate student from Uzbekistan. I happen to think the video is very good for presenting his own philosophy on achievement and success. The end result of being lampooned by so many is that the guy has gained a level of fame and notoriety that he could never have purchased. Say what you want, but the old boy Aleksey knows how to get things done. He even has a page on Wikipedia. Leo lsamoiloff Leo does a pretty good job of presenting "just the facts." This video resume in in response to a specific job position that he is applying for. He is careful not to reveal the company name and refers to his contact information on his printed resume. The lighting is bad and editing out few seconds of dead lead-in time would be good. "Video Resumes Taking Off" Here is an article on the " Secrets of the Job Hunt" website that discusses the growing trend.

"Posting Your Resume on YouTube to Stand Out From the Competition" Here is a Wall Street Journal article on video resumes and the new paradigm. Grant Davis Grant is a software engineer. This is a good, brief summary. The video and audio quality are very good. Allen Ulbricht Video Resume for Sr. Product Mgr, Portal Content. If you wish to contact me, please do so through www.allenulbricht.com . Lael Wageneck This guy is a video production major. It does not include any video of himself, just basically an animated PowerPoint type of presentation with get-down music in the background. Chrissy Harvey Event coordinator aspirant. This is someone who is obviously just reading off of cue cards - probably not a good idea.