Recently I had the opportunity to interview Kelly Giles, Social Media Strategist for Optimal Resume. Kelly introduced herself to me by email and I was so dazzled by how professional – and yet personal – her approach was that I asked for her permission to share the email with you. You can read that here and you can read Part I of the interview here.
Following is Part II of my interview with Kelly.
How can Optimal Resume help job seekers?
Optimal Resume helps job seekers create, present, manage and share their professional credentials and documents from a central online location. We think it’s more important than ever to have not just a great resume and cover letter, but a solid online presence, even if you’re not overwhelmingly tech savvy. We give users with all levels of experience and technical proficiency the tools and advice to quickly and easily produce career materials for any opportunity.
One of the coolest things about our software is that a jobseeker can create an unlimited number of documents. In theory, you could have an entire package (resume, letter, video resume, portfolio, etc.) for each and every job opportunity, focused specifically on a particular employer’s needs.
How can Optimal Resume help employers?
With Optimal 2.0, we focused on how we could help employers throughout the employment life cycle, from recruiting to succession planning to outplacement. Because we’ve focused on colleges and universities, we can give employers access to students at more than 600 schools. That’s valuable for employer branding and early talent acquisition.
Optimal Resume can also help employers keep track of their employees’ growing skill sets. As employees learn new skills, they can add them to their OptimalResume profiles, which are searchable by their employers.
Optimal Resume also offers an affordable option for employers wishing to provide outplacement services for exiting employees. Organizations can give their exiting employees an edge in the job search by providing them with access to our to our array of tools, which creates a feeling of goodwill between employer and former employee, and could decrease the job-search time. And our products are so cost effective that employers can offer them to every departing employee, not just senior ones.
I understand that Optimal Resume has a dog-friendly office. I want to know about that because it would be fun if more companies were dog-friendly.
We’re completely dog friendly — as in four big blacks labs. Three are American (Buster, Sugar, and Emma), one is French (Josette). And this week, as we’ve been in production of Optimal 2.0, we’ve been hosting a Polish web developer and his puppy, a miniature Yorkie Terrier named Fredzio. It’s quite a juxtaposition.
Fredzio
Double checking the developers' work on Optimal 2.0
What’s next for Optimal Resume?
In the next few weeks, we’ll be celebrating Optimal 2.0 and helping our clients get acclimated to the changes. We’re also working on recruiting employers to our ResumeGPS program for online sourcing and screening. In the long term, we’ll keep following employment and job-search trends and figuring out the best way to implement those into our software. Our goal is to maintain our status as a leading career technology provider at colleges and universities and expand our services into other markets.
For more information on Optimal 2.0 you can find Kelly on Twitter and you can read her blog.
