I gave a short presentation at the ONA 2010 conference in Washington, D.C. during a day titled the "Career Summit & Job Fair."  Not a fan of powerpoint and carrying around a slideshow on an unreliable thumb drive, I recently found and used this program for presentations, which is entirely web-based.  And, because I officially teach, I can get an educator's discount for storage and usage. 

During my talk I showed a version of my resume as it lives on LinkedIn.com.  One of the great ideas built into LinkedIn is that if you have carefully built your presence there, you can print it out and it looks like the kind of resume that normally you'd have to create in Microsoft Word or some other office- type software program.  You can save it as a PDF too for e-mailing.

One question from the audience was, "So, how did you decide what to list?"  My response? "In the categories I have listed, you will only see the programs that I truly know how to use." That is, my resume is an honest assessment of what I have actually done and what I have actually used. If you look at mine, I have organized the information differently from what you would normally see, with programs under one category titled "Applications."  Someone else said aloud, "I noticed you didn't list something like 'beginner, intermediate or advanced' next to each application." Good observation.  I replied, "I wouldn't put anything on my resume that I know 'a little.'  If it's there, I can do it/use it."  A few of my listed software programs I do not use everyday so for such applications like Final Cut Pro for video or Adobe Audition for sound editing, I'd need a little time to remember, but I could use it when needed.

I added that before you send a resume to anyone, have an understanding of what the company is looking for in general and then specifically with the opening it has advertised. Then have your resume address exactly what they want, matching your skill set with what they advertise as the job requirements.  You can have different resumes, which was my initial point of showing the one I did during the session. 

After the presentation, most of the comments were about the resume from people who said they had never thought about re-organizing their career information in the way I showed.  But, the main point was that your resume should be accurate, up-to-date and above all honest. 

There's a phrase I like from former First Lady Hillary Clinton.  I remember her saying, "Always tell the truth.  Then you don't have to remember what you said the last time."

Keep that in mind no matter what job you seek and how you build out your public portfolio.