Video Resume Tips- How to Create a Successful Video Resume

The global financial crisis is now having an obvious impact on every walk of life. Unemployment in 30 of the world's wealthiest countries is expected to rise by some 8 million people in the next two years as the severest recession since the 1980s takes hold, according to an Economic Outlook report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. This translates into 42 million unemployed in OECD countries in 2010.


As vacancies continue to evaporate, competition for any job available will become fiercer. After the Christmas holiday, there surely will be a range of intense competition for vacant positions. Want to improve the efficiency of hunting a job? Want more companies get your profile? Here resumes play an important role in the first place.

Except traditional resumes, video resumes have now become one of the hottest new ways to showcase candidacy for a wide range of jobs. This is all due to the quick development of Internet. As a result of it, increasing number of people turn to Internet for old problems. Creating a resume video on YouTube might be the next wave in human resource acquisitions.

A video resume is just a way for job seekers to showcase their abilities beyond the capabilities of a traditional paper resume. The video resume allows prospective employers to see, hear and get a feel for how the applicant presents themselves.

As it how to create a professional video resume, you will get some tips in the following paragraphs. Instead of just using a camera to prepare for a video resume, here I would like to introduce a more perfect way. That is, do it with PowerPoint. Then upload the PowerPoint (in video format) to websites.

Here is a main benefit of doing so: Besides the video you created with your camera, you can also insert some other contents into your video resume with PowerPoint, such as texts (your written statements), pictures (photos of the awards you won), animations and other online videos. This could help show you more comprehensively.

Below are some respects you should pay attention to while capturing the video with camera:
-> Dress properly just as if you were going to an in-person interview
-> Eyes looking at the camera, don’t look around
-> Don’t speak too fast
-> Make sure there is no background noise
-> Discuss why you would be a good employee and what you can do for the company once you were hired
-> Focus on your professional endeavors, not your personal ones
-> The video should not be too long
-> If the video is not perfect, start over

Respects you should pay attention to when preparing the PowerPoint:
-> Use template effectively, since it is for your resume, business or simple style would be better
-> Present your topic by using key phrases
-> Limit the number of slides, too many slides would make prospective employers tired to view
-> Embedding suitable photos and charts could add variety
-> Make the Text’s color and background’s color contrastive
-> Make sure the voice of the video you captured is loud enough

After you finish creating your resume with PowerPoint, the next step is to convert the PowerPoint to video format so that you can upload the PowerPoint to websites. Here are two ways for you to do this:
1. Use some professional conversion tool to help you do this. When searching in Google, you will get lots of advises. When it comes to ease of use, a nice feature set and pure speed of solution, this tool: Acoolsoft PPT2Video Converter becomes a good choice. It is designed to help users convert PowerPoint to almost all popular video formats for easily uploaded to websites.

2. Use Camtasia – a screen video capture program. First save your PPT file in PPS format and set Camtasia studio to record the whole screen. Play your PowerPoint PPS file and Press F9 to start recording the screen. When you reach your last blank slide, Press F10 to stop the recording. After that, you will be prompted to save the captured slideshow, choose a directory and enter a filename for it. Finally, save your capture in AVI format.

Besides uploading your video resume to your own web site, blog and YouTube, there are also some other professional career networking sites, such as MyWorkster, CareerBuilder and Jobster. They all have a section of your profile where you can include video. It would be convenient for employers to view it. Also, you can include a link of your video resume in your paper/online resume to promote it.

Here is a YouTube video made with PowerPoint which introduces several great examples of resume objectives, summaries and profiles: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3Lp8Ts27bM. Take a look and hope it would help you prepare a better resume.

In the new year, may everyone have a good job and a happy time.

Christmas ideas – Making Christmas card with PowerPoint and podcast it on YouTube

Christmas is around the corner! Want to wish your dear ones blessings of joy on this special day? Sending elegant Christmas cards may be a good idea. Especially with the development of the Internet, more and more people tend to send electronic cards instead of paper-based ones to their friends and relatives.

Compared to the traditional cards, ecards are lively and more environment friendly. Besides, it is faster to give your wish by sending an ecard than mailing a postcard. As PC computers getting popular in modern life, ecard is easy to be accessed.

There are many web sites online on which you may find thousands of stunning Christmas cards. But many of them are alike, and no one allows you to create your own. How about DIY your own Christmas ecards? It will be more fun and you are allowed to make full use of your imagination to make your own e-card as interesting as possible. Send the most sincere greetings to your dear ones. Now, let me show you the way of making your own Christmas card.

Since MS PowerPoint and Windows Movie Maker are available on most computers, below is a way of how to make a special and lively Christmas card yourself with the help of these two tools step by step.
1. If you want to personalize a video in your Christmas card
You can make use of the free tool Windows Movie Maker which comes with all Windows XP and Vista installed computers. You can either directly capture a video from the video capture device or make one with existing videos, pictures and music. After the video is OK, you can further add effects, transitions and titles to the video. In simply 3 steps, a personalized video will be created.

Below is an example of how to capture a video for your Christmas card with WMM:
 - Click Capture from video device in the Movie Tasks menu
 - In the coming page, you can set the Mic Volume and configure the camera & video settings

 - Click Next. Then you will be able to see a blank needs you to enter a file name for your captured video and the place you want to save it on your computer.

 - Click Next to continue. In the coming page, choose the video setting for your captured video. Choose Best Quality for Playback on my Computer is recommended.
 - Go on clicking Next to the last step. In this page, you can start to capture video by clicking Start Capture, end the capture by clicking Stop Capture.

 - After you have finished capture a video yourself, click Finish to end this process. The captured video will be displayed at the Collection area. Drag it to the video area in Timeline board. If you still want to add other pictures or music to form your video, you can do this by clicking Import Pictures and Import Audio or Music in the Movie Tasks menu. Then drag all of them to the corresponding area in Timeline board below.

Right click each object in the Timeline board. Then you will be able to set the Video Effects and the Play Timeline for them.
 - After you have adjusted all the settings for your video, you can save the video onto your computer by clicking Save Movie File in the File tab.

2. Form the content of your Christmas card with PowerPoint
As PowerPoint allows you to insert customized backgrounds, characters, pictures, animations, movies, and etc, you can take this advantage to make the content of your Christmas card colorful and meaningful. The video you made with Windows Movie Maker can also be inserted into the PowerPoint. Besides, you can input greetings and warm wishes into the PowerPoint.
In this process, you just need to make full use of your imagination to create the e- card.

3. Turn the PowerPoint you made to video format
The last step for making your own e- card is to convert the PowerPoint you made to video format. In this way, you can make your e- card look like a movie and upload it to websites such as YouTube for wide sharing. After that, you can send out your Christmas greetings just with a video or a website link.

Here you can try this tool: Acoolsoft PPT2Video Converter, it is designed to convert your PowerPoint to almost all popular video formats such as MPEG, AVI, MP4, WMV, 3GP, FLV and MOV.
Currently, the company has launched their Christmas sale, each product are sold at a favorable price.

Here are two DIY Christmas cards from YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SLY_HfO-pQ&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRfvSOuwM_4&feature=related
Interesting? Take actions now, make Christmas ecard by yourself. Send out your warmest and most sincere greetings to your friends and relatives. Have a merry Christmas!