For those of you who don’t know, Bonsai Interactive Marketing is a full service marketing agency focusing on 4 main categories:
- Integrated Marketing Services
- Social Media and Mobile Apps
- Business Education and Workshops
- Web, Print and Media Design Services
My Morning
This morning I walked in the door of the office at around 8:50am and got set up. Once the coffee is on its coaster and within reach, the day can begin. 
As I’m going through the Bonsai emails, I see a resume that has been sent directly to me. I open it up and the first thing I do is look at the name, open a new window and Google this person. I then check all the social sites I belong too and see that this person had not reached out in any way on any platform to say “Hi” and introduce themselves. I found this a bit odd, because if they did their research they would have seen what kind of company we are and the approach would/should have been a lot different.
The Resume
I like resumes as much as I like job descriptions, which is not a heck of a lot. I find a lot of them to be so robotic, with the same mundane “skills”. I’m a good team player with a great attitude who can multi task and… you get the picture. To be blunt, I really don’t care what is on your resume – if I want that type of information, I will check out your LinkedIn profile (yes, you better have one of those).
If I want to see how you interact with people, I can check out your Twitter stream (please don’t make your tweets private!). I can look at your Facebook page or profile (if you have one), or read your blog. And the list goes on. There are no shortage of outlets to observe your habits or communication style online, and if you’re not in that space, then you’re not right for Bonsai.
What You Should Do
I have carried out many interviews, and one of the most re-occuring mistakes I come across is not having the answer to this question: “What do you know about my company?” It blows my mind how many people forget to research this. Know everything you can about the company you want to work for, period.
Get online. The amount of recruiters and HR executives out there that are now turning to social outlets before hiring someone is growing exponentially. Whether or not the saying, “If Google doesn’t know you, you don’t exist” is true is irrelevant. What is relevant is you need to start looking at creating a solid brand for yourself, and it better be a brand a company would be interested in investing in, or you’re wasting your time and potentially theirs.
So Is Bonsai On The Cards?
- Are you online?
- Are you active in the social space?
- Do you have a LinkedIn profile (preferably relevant to our industry)?
- Does your name come up when I search it in Google?
- Have you reached out to anyone at Bonsai to introduce yourself?
- Do you make cookies from scratch?
Then maybe we’re right for you (based on the last point!).
The reason we don’t rely on the resume is because they’re so easy to fabricate. We want to know who you really are – the person behind that piece of paper, the voice behind the “skill set” listed. There is nothing wrong with having a resume – but understand that it’s a small piece of what could potentially make the difference between a yes or a no.
Your Friend,
Troy Claus
“To do more for the world than the world does for you, that is success.” – Henry Ford.
[...] night I was scanning Facebook and caught Troy Claus’s post: Why You Don’t Need A Resume To Work At Bonsai. He begins the post with: For those of you who don’t know, Bonsai Interactive Marketing is a full [...]
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[...] My friend and colleague Troy Claus did a great job of outlining this in his recent blog post Why You Don’t Need a Resume to Work at Bonsai. [...]