Okay, I get it: the ‘traditional resume is dead.’ May we put a stake through this aging topic and just bury it, along with the tombstone resume?

Savvy resumes, by contrast, are not only alive and well, but they have matured, become more sophisticated and muscular, and are more essential now, than ever.

Just yesterday I witnessed a resume that had been forged like a finely carved weapon doing battle for a soldier in job search, and winning the war against unemployment; and the day before that, a pithy and powerful company-targeted resume appealing to the desperation of an over-worked hiring manager underwhelmed with compelling candidates.

As such, it continues to perplex me, the continual interjection of this disruptive question, popularized in the stream of Twitter and other social media. It goes something like this: Is the resume passé? Further, is it being wedged out by social media?

My pondering response (answering a question with more questions):

• Will the complexity of social media: with all of its arteries and veins linking me to this Twitter profile and LinkedIn profile and VisualCV profile, and directing me to that blogging site or that specialist webfolio ‘replace’ the resume?

• Will hiring decision-makers be required to piece together candidates’ value proposition from dozens of resources, linking interlocking and innocuously shaped puzzle pieces to initially discover just a brief career snapshot?

• Will this value-digging rigor be required to gain traction in choosing who to initially interview? Will being an investigative reporter be a requirement to even select to converse with a potential candidate?

• Does a candidate’s presence on the complex and often clogged social media highway replace a tightly and singularly focused resume intended to ‘sum up’ value in crisp, coherent language?

My initial and sustaining thoughts: Noooo, of course not!

It’s simple, the resume, defined by Dictionary.com as ‘a summing up’ will ALWAYS be the central hub from which social media message spokes attach. Or, put another way, the resume is the heartbeat, and the social media vehicles are the veins and arteries that transport the heart blood out and about to the critical organs of job search.

Bottom line: It’s about the words; precise, compelling and targeted words. So, slow down, create your resume ‘hub,’ THEN begin promoting your value message through the spokes of the vast and cascading social media space.