I would argue that “in the age of GitHub, Stack Exchange, Coursera, Udacity, blogs, etc.” the relevance of a concise and a well written resume is more important than ever.

As an employer, I am not going to start with your github projects and blog posts. I might end up checking them if:

• your resume is relevant to my job requirements;
• and your resume demonstrates a track record of achievements.

You do not even have to put links to all the aforementioned sites on your resume. I will google your name if I’m interested.

Look at a resume as a distilled brochure that advertises highlights from your skills and experience. A combination of your github and SO profiles and a bunch of other online resources may be complete and accurate, but it isn’t sorted or otherwise prepared for easy reading in any way. People who hire want you to tell them what you think distinguishes you from the rest, so your resume should be written so that you pass the first three seconds of eyeballing; if it doesn’t, three seconds is all you get. Nobody can form any useful opinion about your skills in three seconds of looking at your github account page.

If you have too much to fit on your resume, great – pick the absolute highlights, and refer to online resources for more. Aim for ‘impressive’, not ‘exhaustive’.

Most HR screening these days done by recruiters and corporate HR departments is automated resume reading. A human never sees your resume/application. A computer program that searches out keywords in a plain text, HTML or Word document determines if your resume matches the specified job criteria.

If it’s a match, a HR person, who knows nothing about GitHub or StackExchange, looks at your resume and double checks the computer results. They may call you on the phone to make sure that you aren’t a total loser or liar. Then, they’ll submit your resume to the department or client along with a stack of other qualifying resumes. (Smaller companies who don’t use a recruiter usually start at this point.)

Then, the hiring manager will begin to sort through a stack of resumes, scanning them for certain keywords/buzzwords and making some subjective judgments. For example, you may have graduated from the same school so you end up on the callback pile. They then ask the recruiter or HR to setup a face-to-face or phone interview for those selected.

In the interview, that’s the time you can bring up things that you do online. They’ll probably Google on you and check out what you’ve given them after that if they like you in person. However, this can work against you in some organizations. They may think you’re too dedicated to outside projects, like a blog or open source projects. They may see a Facebook entry where you’re out partying or being openly religious and be offended by it. They may not like your code style or be intimidated by it. Then again, some hiring managers won’t even bother to do even a Google search and base their decision on the interview alone.

So, a resume still remains as an advertising brochure for you because it’s easily automated and quick to read/scan. Online qualifications are generally something that can be a deal winner or breaker after an initial interview with a hiring manager.

The movie superstars, who command multi-million-dollar flat fees to appear in movies, still have resumes with a headshot and recent achievements, which they send to directors/producers when they’re interested in a role.

Thus, the first and foremost function of a resume. It tells me you’re interested enough in the job to do the work of compiling or tailoring a resume that you think I want to look at. I can cull hundreds of LinkedIn profiles of people whose professional qualifications match the job description of an opening (including geographic location); if unemployment stats of college grads are an indication, only 4 or 5 in 100 have no job and would jump at this, and maybe only 1 or 2 more per hundred would leave their current job to come work for me. It won’t be obvious who’s who, unless some of those people are contacting me (though LinkedIn or otherwise) with interest in a job.

Tech-savvy features, like URLs to relevant blogs you write, LinkedIn profiles, even your user and rep on StackExchange sites, tell me you know your stuff, and more importantly, tell me exactly where to look. Unfortunately, names, even the combination of first and last, are not unique. Google my name and you find 25 LinkedIn profiles, numerous Facebook accounts, articles about Occupy Oakland and references to a US ambassador, very few of which have anything to do with me. If you tell an interviewer “just Google my name”, you better be damn sure the first link is what he wants to see. By contrast, give him the exact URL to your coding blog, give him your exact StackOverflow username so he can look you up, and you have more control by leading him exactly where he needs to go.

My professional experience is limited to a few small companies with small development teams. So take this comment for what it’s worth from my own perspective.

Regardless of how you perceive the relevance of your resume, the fact is that it is still highly relevant in the workplace. HR recruiters aren’t the only ones who will screen your resume. In our teams, our Lead and Senior developers (usually 1 or 2), in addition to our managers are offered the chance to screen your resume and offer an opinion on whether or not they feel they want to talk to you.

That’s the key point. We’re not evaluating your expertise at this point. We’re trying to figure out if you’ve done similar things to what we’re doing. We’re trying to figure out how you communicate those achievements and whether or not you thought they were important to you.

Reviewing your code on GitHub, your reputation and answers on StackOverflow, and other online resources is the equivalent of a research project to me. While this definitely answers questions I might have about your techincal abilities, I just don’t have the time to go reading other people’s code. I’ve already got deadlines to meet.

I could spend 5-10 minutes looking over your resume and highlighting the things that are interesting to me. Or I could spend up to an hour trying to summarize myself what I think your qualifications are. And if I have to summarize you, that means that I likely won’t accurately represent you to my superiors or my team. It’ll be your word against mine about who you are and what you’re capable of.

You wouldn’t want me judging your work by a single item in your online portfolio, right? That wouldn’t be fair to you. But that’s usually the amount of time I have in my professional day to make a decision on whether or not we just want to talk to you. So be fair and considerate of my time by summarizing what you think are your best selling points. If I have to go hunt them down myself, you’ve already raised red flags in my point of view.

Not submitting a resume immediately tells me you don’t care enough about the hiring process to put in a minimal amount of work. Why would I consider hiring you if the projects I have in store for my new hire are a considerable load of additional work?

If GitHub and StackExchange are places online where you’ve achieve some level of notoriety and importance, perhaps highlighting these as professional achievements or hobbies will do more IN your resume.

You need to remember your audience, and broaden your understanding of what they need to make you successful.

If I were a recruiter, how would I present your github repository as validation of your skills in a corporate setting? Submitting such duplicates the work of determining what skills you have across every candidate that might be interested in you. Would you be interested in spending thirty minutes digging through repositories determining if you used a tool set, or reading on your resume that you used it?

Take some time, and learn the process. Then you will see that the resume is practically the only thing that holds the process together. It is the “unit of work” in a hiring process. Who is even going to know your name without one? Developing skill in navigating the hiring process is a diversion from skill developed in other areas, but it is probably one of the most profitable non-programming skills to have.

Create a careers resume. I find it the best way of demonstrating professional experience, education, major achievements, online presence, github repositories, etc. on a single webpage. Plus it is easy to keep it up to date and refer recruiters using a simple URL.