Saskatoon StarPhoenix

Give your resume zip with QR code

- DIANE STAFFORD Diane Stafford is the workplace and careers columnist at The Kansas City Star. Readers may write to her at stafford@kcstar.com.

Just when you think you have your resume looking pretty good, James Alexander suggests a Botox injection.

Actually, he’s just using Botox as a metaphor for an infusion of youth.

How so? The founder of Vizibility, an online “reputation management” company, suggests adding a quick-response code, or QR code, to your resume.

QR codes are those matrix bar codes that you see on advertisem­ents and product labels. Scan the QR code with a smartphone — more than half the population now has one — and you’ll open up more product informatio­n.

You, Alexander says, are a product. You are selling yourself and competing against a lot of other technosavv­y people.

Alexander started his company after he Googled his name and 23,000 hits popped up — almost all of which weren’t about him. He then decided to create a “digital bridge to a richer set of informatio­n.”

“WHY SIT ON THE SIDELINES WHEN YOUNG USERS ARE EMBRACING THE TECHNOLOGY?”

JAMES ALEXANDER

You can check out the products — some of them free — that Vizibility offers online. Depending on just how much online “reputation management” you want, you can pay up to $99 a year to have an active account with his company.

And that includes embedding QR codes on resumes. The point is that a hirer or someone you’re trying to add to your network can click on it and learn more about you.

The important thing, Alexander says, is that your QR code doesn’t just give a picture of your business card or something equally static. It needs to create a “mobile experience” — video perhaps — that can help you tout yourself.

QR codes on resumes are still new. But that’s partly why Alexander calls it Botox for job hunters, or any profession­al for that matter.

“Why sit on the sidelines when young users are embracing the technology?” he asks. “You want to appear with it. You want to make it easier to learn more about you quickly.”

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