Resume tape, my ass...subscribe to my RSS feed

One of the most expensive things we in the TV news industry have to deal with (outside of agents) is maintaining a portfolio of our best work - anchoring, reporting, interviewing, field work - in the event of needing to document our work to get a better and/or more lucrative gig. Typically this means archiving a library of VHS tapes and printed scripts typically involving generation loss due to copying from digital to analog formats.

I've been maintaining a hybrid RSS feed (MP3s, MP4s, blog posts, URLs to stories I've covered, etc.) that profiles the moments as a broadcaster of which I'm most proud, using it as a low-cost alternative to the traditional resume tape/printed work library. I've no longer got to schlep around tons of materials that are prohibitively expensive to reproduce, without a guarantee I'll even land the prospective job. And inherently digital, the quality of the data isn't subjected to degradation from mass (re)copying.

I've used this a few times already and it blew the interested employers away. They thought it was really neat that I just sent them a URL and that they could download, share and comment on my stuff. Granted, I probably screwed myself out of more jobs from technical Luddites in HR not knowing how to subscribe to a syndicated feed and disregarding me as non-conformist.

But maybe that's better - I wouldn't want to work at a company that isn't down with RSS, anyway.